Homily - 12 January 2025 - The Feast of the Baptism of the Lord

The Feast of the Baptism of the Lord

Dear brothers and sisters,

As we commemorate the Baptism of the Lord in the waters of the Jordan River, we are reminded that it is in the waters of Baptism that we are born into the family of God and are made members of his Church. Moreover, it is in that holy bath that we pledge our loyalty, our love, and our service to Christ. Baptism is the gift of God by which he gives us his very own life and makes us his sons and daughters by reason of which our lives are changed forever.

Detail, Scenes from the life of Christ and life of Blessed Gerard of Villamagna, MS M 643, fol. 5v

Baptism, of course, is not something that we do for ourselves. Rather, it is something we receive from God’s own initiative. Baptism “is a gift; the gift of life. But a gift must be accepted, it must be lived.”[1] No one gives a gift except in token of friendship and a gift of friendship implies a "yes" to the friend and a "no" to all that is incompatible with this friendship. When we receive the gift of Baptism, it implies a “no” to all that is incompatible with the life of God's family, to all that is incompatible with true life in Christ.

Consequently, in the second dialogue of the Rite of Baptism, three “noes” and three “yeses” are spoken. We say "no" as we renounce temptation, sin, and the devil. We know these things well – that we will be tempted by the world, by the flesh, and by the devil, and that we will sin – but, perhaps precisely because we have heard these renunciations so often, the words may not mean too much to us. If this is the case, we must think a little more deeply about the content of these “noes.” To what are we saying "no"? This is the only way to understand what we want to say "yes" to

 

In the ancient Church, these "noes" were summed up in a phrase that was easy to understand for the people of that time: they renounced, as they said, the "pompa diabuli" (the pomp of the devil), that is, the promise of life in abundance, of that apparent life that seemed to come from the pagan world, from its permissiveness, from its way of living as one pleased. It was therefore a "no" to a culture of what seemed to be an abundance of life, to what was in fact an "anticulture" of death. It was a "no" to those spectacles in which death, cruelty, and violence had become an entertainment. This "pompa diabuli", this "anticulture" of death, was actually a corruption of joy, it was the love of deceit and fraud, and the abuse of the body as a commodity and a trade. If we think about it now, we can say that also in our time we need to say "no" to the widely prevalent culture of death, to the pompa diabuli which still seems to run rampant. As Fulton Sheen reminds us, “Never forget that there are only two philosophies to rule your life: the one of the cross, which starts with the fast and ends with the feast. The other of Satan, which starts with the feast and ends with the headache."

 

The pomp of the devil is still manifested, for example, in drugs, in the flight from reality to what is illusory; to a false happiness expressed in deceit, fraud, injustice, and contempt for others; it is expressed in a sexuality that becomes sheer irresponsible enjoyment, that makes the human person into a "thing," so to speak, no longer considered a person who deserves personal love which requires fidelity, but who becomes a commodity, a mere object; it is expressed by the embrace of freedom simply for the sake of individual autonomy; it is expressed in the desire for wealth that cannot be spent; it is expressed in the desire for comfort that allows me to be lazy and allows me to ignore the struggles of the poor; it is expressed in the willingness to throw away what makes me uncomfortable or gets in my way; it is expressed in the willingness to reject lifelong monogamous marriage in the desire to define myself solely accordingly to my sexual urges; it is expressed in the desire to remain forever youthful, which leads me to ignore the fact that one day I will die.

 

Brothers and sisters, let us say "no" to this pompa, to this promise of apparent happiness, to anticulture of what may seem to be life but is in fact merely an instrument of death, and to this anticulture. If we say “no” to all of this, if we say “no” to so much of what our culture embraces, promotes, and imposes, it allows to say something much greater. Saying “no” to the pomp of the devil and his empty promises enables us to say “yes” to the true culture of life. For this reason, the Christian "yes," from ancient times to our own day, is a great "yes" to life. It is our "yes" to Christ, our "yes" to the Conqueror of death, our "yes" to life in time and in eternity.

 

Just as in this baptismal dialogue the "no" is expressed in three renunciations, so too is the "yes" expressed in three expressions of loyalty: "yes" to the living God, that is, a God Creator and a creating reason who gives meaning to the cosmos and to our lives; "yes" to Christ, that is, to a God who did not stay hidden but who has a name, words, a body, and blood, to a concrete God who gives us life and shows us the path of life; "yes" to the communion of the Church, in which Christ is the living God who enters our time, enters our profession, enters our daily life.

We might also say that the Face of God, the content of this culture of life, the content of our great "yes," is expressed in the Ten Commandments, which are not a pack of prohibitions, of "noes," but actually present to us a great vision of life. They are a "yes" to the God who gives meaning to life (the first three Commandments); a "yes" to the family (the Fourth Commandment); a "yes" to life (the Fifth Commandment); a "yes" to responsible love (the Sixth Commandment); a "yes" to solidarity, to social responsibility, to justice (the Seventh Commandment); a "yes" to the truth (the Eighth Commandment); a "yes" to respect for others and for their belongings (the Ninth and 10th Commandments). This is the Christian philosophy of life, the culture of life that becomes concrete and practical and beautiful in communion with Christ, the living God, who walks with us in the companionship of his friends, in the great family of the Church.

 

Baptism is a gift of life! It is a "yes" to the challenge of really living life, of saying "no" to the attack of death that presents itself under the guise of life; and it is a "yes" to the great gift of true life that became present on the Face of the Child of Bethlehem, who gives himself to us in Baptism and in the Eucharist. Therefore, whenever we present ourselves to receive the Holy Eucharist, the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ, we renew our “no” to the anti-culture of death even as we renew our “yes” to life, to the Church, and to Christ.

 

Today, as we celebrate the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord and conclude the season of Christmas, let us renew our commitment to make our lives firmly rooted in the faith of Jesus Christ, in all that we received when we were washed clean in the saving waters of Baptism. Let each of us say a firm “no” to the pomp of this world and a resounding “yes” to Christ and so build a society founding on the reality of life and love. Amen.

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[1] Pope Benedict XVI, Homily, 8 January 2008. The remainder of his homily follows in an adapted form.

Homily - 29 December 2024 - The Feast of the Holy Family

The Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph

Dear brothers and sisters,

Mother Church calls us to reflect on the reality of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph today because the example of their family life teaches us something about God. In fact, “God himself is a kind of family. He is not like a family, but a family is like him.”[1] Consequently, it is good for us to ask how closely – or if - our families are like God?

Simone Martini, Christ Discovered in the Temple

A few decades ago, we - as a society - recognized the family as the most important institution to the building of a just and harmonious society. The family was seen as the place in which we learned how to love one another, how to forgive one another, and how to put others before oneself, values fundamental to society. The family was seen as a school of love and of self-forgetfulness. This selflessness was learned from watching the example of the husband and wife whose primary task was to “establish between themselves a partnership of their whole life, … which of its own very nature is ordered to the well-being of the spouses and to the procreation and upbringing of children” (canon 1055 § 1).

We knew that for a happy and successful marriage, a husband must put the needs of his wife ahead of his own and that a wife must put the needs of her husband ahead of her own. We knew a husband and wife must safeguard their relationship and look to it before anything else. We knew parents must put the needs of their children ahead of their own desires and that children should honor and respect their parents, just as parents should honor and respect their children. We knew that if each member of the family looked to the example of Christ Jesus, family life would be beautiful, joyous, and life-giving.

But something happened along the way, and we decided it was acceptable and good to ignore centuries of wisdom. Rather than continuing to protect and safeguard the family because of its importance to the common good, we decided it was acceptable to redefine and to refashion the family because of our selfish desires.

We first decided children should no longer be received and welcomed as gifts and blessings from God, but that we should instead be able to determine when and how many were accepted. When contraception was widely used and considered good despite its clear violation of the law of nature and of God, husbands and wives decided they could separate the two aims of the marital act; they changed its primary focus from that of a complete gift of self to each other and turned it into the satisfaction of individual desires. No longer would marriage be about the mutual well-being and unity of the spouses that increased their love and made it fruitful, but about what someone else can do for me. From here, a second decision that children could be done away with if they were unwanted seemed an obvious – even if grotesque and deplorable - consequence.

Once marriage was no longer seen as the full sharing of life and love between husband and wife, it was an easy jump to say marriage was also no longer permanent. First, we decided marriages could be dissolved in difficult and tragic circumstances. Then, quite against the very clear words of the Lord Jesus, we decided marriages could be ended for any reason, or even no reason at all, if one or both of the spouses wanted to end it. We continued to make marriage about individual wants and desires, and not about the mutual sharing of life and love.

As these changes to the long-standing and accepted definition of marriage were made over the course of just a few decades, most Christians regrettably and scandalously went along with them and even welcomed them gladly. From this, as many rightly warned, the family received a very great wound from which it has not recovered and from which it continues to suffer greatly. Family life began to fall apart and, with it, society, as well. These are not popular words today, but the truth is not always very popular.

Christians accepted these changes, and even pioneered them, because we largely forgot that

the Bible is full of families, births, love stories and family crises. This is true from its very first page, with the appearance of Adam and Eve’s family with all its burden of violence but also its enduring strength (cf. Genesis 4) to its very last page, where we behold the wedding feast of the Bride and the Lamb (Revelation 21:2, 9).[2]

We forgot that family life is not necessarily meant to be easy but is still rewarding. We forgot that marriage and the family is to be the school of love and selflessness. We forgot that the family is not about me, but about us.

It is a curious reality of the inner workings of the mind of God that he continually chooses to allow us – weak and sinful as we are - to be instruments of his grace.

The ability of human couples to beget life is the path along which the history of salvation progresses. Seen this way, the couple’s fruitful relationship becomes an image for understanding and describing the mystery of God himself, for in the Christian vision of the Trinity, God is contemplated as Father, Son and Spirit of love. The triune God is a communion of love, and the family is its living reflection. Saint John Paul II shed light on this when he said, “Our God in his deepest mystery is not solitude, but a family, for he has within himself fatherhood, sonship and the essence of the family, which is love. That love, in the divine family, is the Holy Spirit”. The family is thus not unrelated to God’s very being.[3]

We reshaped marriage according to our own desires because we forgot that we are made in the image and likeness of God; we forgot that marriage is meant to reflect the inner life of God, to make his love the foundation of our lives.

This is, in part, why the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity chose to be born of a woman to take on our flesh at Bethlehem.

In the Gospel we do not find discourses on the family but an event which is worth more than any words:  God wanted to be born and to grow up in a human family. In this way he consecrated the family as the first and ordinary means of his encounter with humanity.[4]

The importance of the family is intimately involved with the mystery of Christmas and gives us good reason to ask how well our families reflect the love of the Triune God.

Husbands and wives, strive to love each other well and freely, not because of what your spouse gives you or does for you or brings to you, but simply for the sake of your spouse; love your spouse because of your spouse. If you do, you will imitate the love of God who loves us not because of what we can do for him, but because we are his. Follow the counsel of Saint Paul and

put on, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving one another, if one has a grievance against another; as the Lord has forgiven you, so must you also do. And over all these put on love, that is, the bond of perfection. And let the peace of Christ control your hearts, the peace into which you were also called in one body. And be thankful (Colossians 3:12-15).

Allow your marriage to be marked by gratitude, forgiveness, and love so you may always reflect the merciful love of the Christ Child to a hurting world. Let your marriage shine out as a beacon of hope to the suffering. Teach your children to forgive one another and to let go of grudges. Teach them, through your own example, the beauty of a life lived for God and for others. Teach them to trust in God and not in themselves. Teach them to open their hearts to God and to allow him to dwell in them richly.

If you make your marriage a full sharing of life and love and a true and complete self-gift to your spouse, your marriage will be happy, successful, and, more importantly, a reflection of God’s own love. You and your children, by the grace of God, will be able to begin slowly rebuilding and refashioning society by restoring a recognition of the beauty of marriage and of the family.

Standing today at the threshold of a new year, we can either look forward in gloom, or we can look forward in hope; we can look at the wound we have inflicted on the family and on society, or we can look at the remedy. Some sixteen hundred years ago, Saint Augustine said, “Bad times! Troublesome times! This men are saying. Let our lives be good; and the times are good. We make our times; such as we are, such are the times.”[5]

Let families, then, again be schools of love and selflessness. Let them place the Child Jesus in the center of their hearts! May we strive to conform our lives to that of the Christ Child and so change the times in which we live, that we may all come to dwell in the joy of the Father’s house. Amen.

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[1] Peter Kreeft, Why Does Everything Come in Threes? A Short Book about Everything (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2024), 35.

[2] Pope Francis, Amoris Laetita, 8.

[3] Pope Francis, Amoris Laetitia, 11. Pope Saint John Paul II, Homily at the Eucharistic Celebration in Pueblo de los Angeles, 28 January 1979.

[4] Pope Benedict XVI, Angelus Address, 31 December 2006.

[5] Saint Augustine of Hippo, Sermon 30.8.

Homily - The Funeral of John Jones - 22 November 2024

The Funeral Mass for John Robert Jones

Dear brothers and sisters,

The words we have heard from Saint Paul are as a mine into which we must delve, and in which we must work to discover great gems through which the light of the Christian life is refracted. Central to his words is the idea of adoption into the family of God. We have gathered here today, having brought John with us into this church he loved so much, because he is a child of God (cf. Romans 8:14). But we know who John’s parents are; how did he become a child of God?

Saint Augustine tells us that “by spiritual regeneration we therefore become sons and are adopted into the kingdom of God, not as aliens but as his creatures and offspring.”[1] This regeneration happens to a Christian through Baptism. The Lord Jesus himself says, “Amen, Amen, I say to you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and the spirit. What is born of flesh is flesh and what is born of spirit is spirit” (John3:5-6). Saint Paul describes Baptism as a participation in Christ, which is why he asks,

Or are you unaware that we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were indeed buried with him through baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might live in newness of life. For if we have grown into union with him through a death like his, we shall also be united with him in the resurrection (Romans6:3-5).

It is a great mystery to say a person dies in the waters of Baptism, just as so many died in the waters of the flood, yet this reality is at the heart of the Christian faith (cf. Genesis 7:23). The very waters that bring about a participation in the death Christ, however, also bring about a participation – at this very moment and as a promise of future glory – in the Resurrection of Christ Jesus from the dead. This is why Saint Peter says the ark of Noah “prefigured baptism, which saves you now. It is not a removal of dirt from the body but an appeal to God for a clear conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ” (I Peter 3:21).

We have placed John’s mortal remains here at the foot of the sanctuary near the Paschal Candle, the symbol of the Risen Lord, triumphant over sin and death. This candle was lit on the day of John’s baptism in Christ and from it John was entrusted with the light of Christ. Before bringing John here, we sprinkled his body with Holy Water, a reminder of those waters that saved him, and clothed him the funeral pall, the final baptismal garment because, as Saint Paul says, “For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ” (Galatians 3:27).

All of this is to say that through Baptism we share in the sonship of Christ and with him are able to call upon God as Father, frail and finite as we are. “This is a mystery we can only marvel at, just as [Saint] John did when he wrote, ‘See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called children of God. Yet so we are’ (I John 3:1).”[2]

To call God “Father” was all but unheard of in the ancient world. The pagans did not do so; the Jews did, though only rarely (cf. Isaiah 63:16; Wisdom 14:3; Sirach 23:1).

What was an occasional in Israel became habitual with the Messiah. Invoking God as Father was Jesus’ normal way, the most prominent and distinctive feature of his prayer and speech. Now Christians indwelt with the Spirit have the privilege of making Christ’s prayer their own.[3]

Consequently, all those who have received the grace of Baptism “now carry this Spirit within them and can speak like Jesus and with Jesus as true children to their Father; they can say ‘Abba’ because they have become sons in the Son.”[4]

If all of this is true, what are we to make of Saint Paul’s reference to “the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear” (Romans 8:15)? This is what Saint Augustine said: “The fear, then, of which we speak is slavish; and therefore, even though there be in it a belief in the Lord, yet righteousness is not loved by it, but condemnation is feared. God's children, however, exclaim, Abba, Father…”[5] Those baptized into Christ Jesus call out to God with loving trust, confident they are in the gentle “hand of God, and no torment shall touch them” (Wisdom 3:1).

We have brought John’s body here because the Spirit of God once dwelt within it. Soon we will honor this temple with incense, even as ask God to purify John and grant him a place of peace (cf. I Corinthians 6:19; Wisdom 3:3). We will do so in the knowledge that

Adoption is already guaranteed for those who believe, but it has been accomplished only spiritually, not physically. The body has not yet received its heavenly transformation, although the spirit, which has turned from its errors to God, has already been changed by the reconciliation of faith. Therefore even believers still await the revelation which will come with the resurrection of the body. This is the fourth state, when everything will be in perfect peace at eternal rest, completely free of malignant corruption or nagging torment.[6]

This heavenly transformation of the body was promised to John in Baptism, as it was promised to each of us, provided we live a life in keeping with the spirit of adoption we have received. Together, then, let us cry out to the Father that John, who shared in the sonship of the Son, may be with the Lord Jesus to know the fullness of the love of the Triune God, now and forever. Amen.

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[1] Saint Augustine of Hippo, Sermon on the Mount, 23.78.

[2] Scott W. Hahn, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture: Romans (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2017), 134.

[3] Ibid., 135-136.

[4] Pope Benedict XVI, General Audience Address, 8 October 2008.

[5] Saint Augustine of Hippo, The Spirit and the Letter, 56.

[6] Ibid., On Romans, 53.