Login \| Contact



Homilies Advent Advent Week 1 Year A Week 1 Year B Week 1 Year C Week 2 Year A Week 2 Year B Week 2 Year C Week 3 Year A Week 3 Year B Week 3 Year C Week 4 Year A Week 4 Year B Week 4 Year C Christmas Baptism of the Lord Year A Baptism of the Lord Year B Baptism of the Lord Year C Epiphany Year A Epiphany Year B Epiphany Year C Holy Family Year A Holy Family Year B Holy Family Year C Mary Mother of God Year A Mary Mother of God Year B Mary Mother of God Year C Mass at Midnight Year A Mass at Midnight Year B Mass at Midnight Year C Back to the Boat Heaven to Earth, Sea to River Lent Lent Week 1 Year A Week 1 Year B Week 1 Year C Week 2 Year A Week 2 Year B Week 2 Year C Week 3 Year A Week 3 Year B Week 3 Year C Week 4 Year A Week 4 Year B Week 4 Year C Week 5 Year A Week 5 Year B Week 5 Year C Ash Wednesday "Do You Want to Be Healed?" Holy Week Passion Sunday Year A Passion Sunday Year B Passion Sunday Year C Holy Thursday Good Friday Easter Vigil "Where Peter Is" Easter Sunday Easter Sunday Year A Easter Sunday Year B Easter Sunday Year C Easter Season Week 2 Year A Week 2 Year B Week 2 Year C Week 3 Year A Week 3 Year B Week 3 Year C Week 4 Year A Week 4 Year B Week 4 Year C Week 5 Year A Week 5 Year B Week 5 Year C Week 6 Year A Week 6 Year B Week 6 Year C Week 7 Year A Week 7 Year B Week 7 Year C Ascension Ascension Year A Ascension Year B Ascension Year C Pentecost Pentecost Year A Pentecost Year B Pentecost Year C ORDINARY TIME Ordinary Time Wks 2-7 Ord. Time Week 2 Year A Week 2 Year B Week 2 Year C Week 3 Year A Week 3 Year B Week 3 Year C Week 4 Year A Week 4 Year B Week 4 Year C Week 5 Year A Week 5 Year B Week 5 Year C Week 6 Year A Week 6 Year B Week 6 Year C Week 7 Year A Week 7 Year B Week 7 Year C Ordinary Time Wks 8-13 Week 8 Year A Week 8 Year B Week 8 Year C Week 9 Year A Week 9 Year B Week 9 Year C Week 10 Year A Week 10 Year B Week 10 Year C Week 11 Year A Week 11 Year B Week 11 Year C Week 12 Year A Week 12 Year B Week 12 Year C Week 13 Year A Week 13 Year B Week 13 Year C Ordinary Time Wks 14-19 Week 14 Year A Week 14 Year B Week 14 Year C Week 15 Year A Week 15 Year B Week 15 Year C Week 16 Year A Week 16 Year B Week 16 Year C Week 17 Year A Week 17 Year B Week 17 Year C Week 18 Year A Week 18 Year B Week 18 Year C Week 19 Year A Week 19 Year B Week 19 Year C Ordinary Time Wks 20-25 Week 20 Year A Week 20 Year B Week 20 Year C Week 21 Year A Week 21 Year B Week 21 Year C Week 22 Year A Week 22 Year B Week 22 Year C Week 23 Year A Week 23 Year B Week 23 Year C Week 24 Year A Week 24 Year B Week 24 Year C Week 25 Year A Week 25 Year B Week 25 Year C Ordinary Time Wks 26-31 Week 26 Year A Week 26 Year B Week 26 Year C Week 27 Year A Week 27 Year B Week 27 Year C Week 28 Year A Week 28 Year B Week 28 Year C Week 29 Year A Week 29 Year B Week 29 Year C Week 30 Year A Week 30 Year B Week 30 Year C Week 31 Year A Week 31 Year B Week 31 Year C Ordinary Time Wks 32-34 Week 32 Year A Week 32 Year B Week 32 Year C Week 33 Year A Week 33 Year B Week 33 Year C Week 34 Year A Week 34 Year B Week 34 Year C First Move Letting Go of the Tree Major Feast Days All Souls 1 All Souls 2 Body and Blood of Christ Year A Body and Blood of Christ Year B Body and Blood of Christ Year C Christ the King Year A Christ the King Year B Christ the King Year C Peter and Paul Apostles Trinity Sunday Year A Trinity Sunday Year B Trinity Sunday Year C In Memoriam Memorial of Victory "Up to Jerusalem" Sacred Humanity Homiletic Bibliography Bibliography Pt I (A-G) Bibliography Pt II (H-N) Bibliography Pt III (O-Z) Commentary Catholic Life Faith & the Cult of Pleasantness Fatherhood and Family Holy Marriage, Holy Family Jesus Calls Me Friend Outdoor Plumbing Works of Mercy Defending the Catholic Church Confession Living Letter Bathing Often Eucharist Divine Authority Human Pride Mother of God Persecution Philosophy Priesthood and Papacy Respect for Life Gospel of Luke - Study Luke Chapters 1 - 2 Luke Chapters 3 - 4 Luke Chapters 5 - 6 Luke Chapters 7 - 8 Luke Chapters 9 - 10 Luke Chapters 11 - 12 Luke Chapters 13 - 14 Luke Chapters 15 - 16 Luke Chapters 17 - 18 Luke Chapters 19 - 20 Luke Chapters 21 - 22 Luke Chapters 23 - 24 Questions & Answers Catholic Belief Fortitude: Gift or Virtue? Great Commandment Hierarchy of Truth Same-sex Partnerships Catholic Practice Holding Hands at Mass Wearing Shorts at Mass Hierarchy Church Hierarchy Hierarchy of Truth Scandal and Trust Why a Pope and Bishops? Liturgy Holding Hands at Mass Hymn Resource for Mass Lay Ministry - Liturgy Substituting Song for Sign of Peace Wearing Shorts at Mass Relationship Devotion and Trust Marriage and Celibacy Tell Him the Truth Thorn in Your Side Respect Life Does Ignorance Justify Abortion? Human Personhood On the Subject of Cloning Sacraments Baptism - Child of Civil Union Does the Eucharist Reveal Jesus? Male Priesthood of Christ Sign and Symbol INRI - Crucifix World Affairs Immigration Worries Mercy, Justice and World Affairs Unite on United Nations? Walking with the Word - Lessons Walking with the Word - Lessons A-M Blessed Are You Deep Water "Father, Forgive Them" Garden, Stable & City of God - Part 1 Garden, Stable & City of God - Part 2 God Knows God Loves You Because God's Heart of Love Humanity of Man "Lamentation" "Let Us Go Down" - Part 1 "Let Us Go Down" - Part 2 "Let Us Go Down" - Part 3 "My Power in You" Walking with the Word - Lessons N-Z New Growth on an Old Vine New Wrinkle on an Old Story "One Degree of Glory to Another" Proof of Peace Reason & Acting Reasonably Solomon's Ring Standard of Dress for Mass Sword of Sorrow "Take Off Your Shoes" Take Up Your Cross - Part 1 Take Up Your Cross - Part 2 "Thou Little Tiny Child" True Food - Part 1 True Food - Part 2 Watch, Hat and Scissors Word of Justice, Word of Mercy Reflections Big or Small Christmas Present Clean White Corporal Christian Prayer Delivered from Fear Do You Love Me More? Elegant Recovery Entrust the Sick to God Faith and Choosing Faithful Follower Friendship with Christ Good Physician He Gave Me Wings Heaven's Ecology I Don't Need the Church Last Defense Living Biography of the Church Love Is Hungry Making Bread Thoughts on Merton Our Lady of Divine Grace Remnant Saying Yes to God Self-reflection Sentences Armor of God Counting Your Blessings Passage on Peter's Boat Virginity Sock Puppet Sun, Mast and Horizon We Lament Window of Receptivity Would He Die for One? Devotions Divine Mercy Chaplet Embracing Mercy Indulgence Novena Litany of the Sacred Heart Lord's Prayer Our Lady of Divine Grace Rosary Fatima Rosary Vigil Rosary Saint Therese Centenary Chaplet Seven Last Words of Christ Various Authors Augustine of Hippo Benjamin Franklin Clement of Alexandria Ignatius of Antioch John Henry Cardinal Newman J.R.R. Tolkien Michel Quoist Pope Benedict XVI Pope Pius XII Various Prayers Blessing for a Pregnancy Circle of Faith Choice Vines For Fathers For My Son For Spiritual Fatherhood Gathered Like Wheat Grateful Praise Healing Medicine Hidden Wisdom Hour Has Arrived My Little Girl No One Else but God O Lord Your Love O Shepherd Prayer for the Military Sake of Blessing Sweet Grapes Teachable Heart Thousand Years To All but You O Lord To Father Son and Spirit Wheat and Grape

THIS IS my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. [Jn 15:12-15]

Artist: Victor Luciano Rebuffo

(1903-1983)

Buenos Aires, Argentina

DANCE FLOOR ^_[1]

DEFINING MARK

1. When one believes in God, he chooses for truth and entrusts himself to truth. He will declare, I believe God is truth. When one seeks the fulfillment of faith, he chooses for God--the origin of absolute, unchanging, and eternal truth--and entrusts himself to God. Thus, he passionately proclaims, I believe God. For our Divine Lesson today, we pay homage to the people assembled in the centurions house in Caesarea, all of whom Luke offers to us for the sake of example. (Lat. exempli gratia) Directed by God to follow the emissaries of Cornelius, Peter enters the centurions house. There he meets the centurion and his assembled kinsmen and friends. For its part, the Roman household entrusts itself to the truth of Peter's proclamation, namely that Jesus--having been anointed by the Holy Spirit and power--inaugurated the Kingdom of God by healings and good works done in the Father's name. After rising from the grave, declares the apostle, Jesus commissioned Peter and the twelve to announce him as the "judge of the living and the dead". [Acts 10:42] While preaching to the members of this Roman household about the risen Lord, Peter experiences how faith processes to belief. In Caesarea, Peter confronts a new phenomenon: a Roman citizen who, with his entire household, reveres God, generously aids the Jewish people from his own income, and prays unceasingly to God. Peter discerns that the Jewish religion--albeit the foundation on which Christianity rested--presented a wholly inadequate model for responding to Spirit-led change and growth. Judaism traditionally had yoked historical self-preservation to religious exclusivity. From a theological perspective--apart from an extravagant hope in messianic deliverance from Roman subjugation--the practice of Judaic religion coalesced as a choke point beyond which God was not viewed as a credible presence in the ordinary lives of human beings and in the affairs of nations. Peter's faith leads him to recognize divine truth. All persons who lead just and upright lives, he reasons, are worthy of the gospel irregardless of national origin or status in life. If the gospel message is catholic, that is, universally applicable to all, then the Church itself must be a shelter to all who profess the gospel. Peter, as shepherd of the faithful, entrusts himself to the revelation of God. He comes to believe that catholicity is a defining dynamic of the Church.^[2] Therefore, impelled by faith, Peter interprets divine revelation and articulates it as belief: "Truly I perceive that God shows no partiality, but in every nation any one who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him." [Lk 10: 34-35] Moreover, Peter breaks the yoke of the Mosaic Law before it hobbles the faith of Cornelius and his household, indeed before it effectively extinguishes the emergent Christian movement altogether. Peter exercises his authoritative teaching role (Lat. magisterium) for the good of the universal Church. What delights Peter and roils his Jewish companions is the Holy Spirits imprimatur upon the faith of the Gentile Cornelius and his family. Only after Peter's pronouncement that all who follow the commandments of God are pure and beloved in his sight, do his incredulous companions understand what the Spirit has accomplished. At Peter's command, they assist in the baptism of the Roman household.

BETTER PORTION

2. The text of Eucharistic Prayer II in the SACRAMENTARY emphasizes that all persons--Jew or Greek, male or female, slave or free [cf. Gal 3:28]--stand in need of justification by grace in Jesus Christ. Do we not pray to be made "...worthy to share eternal life with Mary, the virgin Mother of God, with the apostles and with all the saints who have done (God's) will throughout the ages"?^[3] The eucharistic prayer does not differentiate categories of worthiness or human merits. On the contrary, the prayer of thanksgiving underscores the fallen condition of every human being while simultaneously praising the Lord for declaring all the baptized justified through the blood of Jesus Christ. Therefore, the people of God, gathering to share the one body and the one cup, pray with confidence: We thank you for counting us worthy to stand in your presence and serve you.^[4] The psalmist encourages God's people to sing a new song. [cf. Psa 33:3] Embolden by faith, we may assert that we have been given a new song of love whose words are composed by Christ: "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you." [Jn 15:12-14] The imperative mood of this lyrical meditation is unmistakable. The lives of Jesus' followers are to evidence profound change for the good. If his followers fail in this, either they have rejected his word or Jesus, himself, is a fraud. Any uncertainty, however, about the authenticity of Jesus of Nazareth (or his mission and identity) is conquered by his resurrection from the dead. Jesus, by laying down his life for them, has chosen the better portion. [cf. Lk 10:42] Because our Lord's love for his friends is unsurpassed, he invites us to the fullness of his portion. By his wounds Christ heals the injured world by a command: "...love one another even as I have loved you". [Jn 13:34] Such a commandment cannot be refuted. Such a commandment cannot be ignored. Without doubt, the apostle John took his Lord's exhortation to heart. To the Christian churches, he writes of the mystery of love imparted to him by Jesus of Nazareth many years earlier. The marvel of love, he recalls, is not found in the human person's love for God, but rather in God's love for mankind. Love's consummation is achieved in the sending-forth of his Son in expiation for the sins of the world. Man's capacity to know that God exists and to ascertain something of His divine attributes is nothing less than a proof of God: "Beloved, let us love one another; for love is of God, and he who loves is born of God and knows God." [1Jn 4:7] Man is offered a two-fold gratuity: his humanity and its perfection. Beyond the dance floor of human existence is not a god of crushing terror and anxiety, nor a deity of impassive, insensible concentration of energy, whose unapproachable remoteness compels man to dance by himself. Eventually every human person acting on faith must choose to believe in God as divine person or not to believe in him. Believing must precede all else. Absent it, religion lacks coherence. Moreover, believing and believing in God is essential if man is to incarnate the spiritual in his life. To entrust one's faith to God is to surrender to the immediate and compelling person of God. It is to recognize that the authentic human question has less to do with man's own being and more with his becoming: "...you did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit". [Jn 15:16]

CHOREOGRAPHY OF RELATIONSHIP

3. No matter how God may be defined, whether as a being, a person, or a power (or all of these) deity and the supernatural are not the stuff of feelings or abstraction. This is to say that man's natural reason, if properly used, is sufficient to shield him from extremism whether on the side of belief or non-belief. Eschewing the idolatries of fundamentalist philistinism and intellectual pharisaism and their cult of self-righteous apartheid, the just and virtuous Christian draws near to the person of God from whom love and all else in creation originate. He embraces God who wills his love to be without constraint: "In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins." [1Jn 4:10] The mystery of creation is greater than the sum of its observable parts: it quietly and gently attests to the existence of God and to the nature of His divine attributes. God offers man a participation in the heart of this mystery. The consequence of the redemption won for us by Jesus Christ is that divine love regenerates the man who gives his love away to God and neighbor. God chooses, in his infinite grace, to bring us near to him in love and intimacy. We become real by accepting friendship with God and remaining faithful to His love throughout our lives. God's presence can be discovered in the midst of the singularly human experience of loving, in the tantalizing potentiality of giving and receiving self-less love.^[5] Our new existence is friendship with God, based on our willingness to love and be loved authentically even when it means that we must make heroic sacrifices, even "that a man lay down his life for his friends". [Jn 15:13] The either-or challenge of faith confronts every generation of men and women and defines the choreography of all human relationships. All questions of faith are birthed in the human soul and traverse outward: every question of faith contains within itself a seed for sowing, a journey's first step, one word of the song. Nevertheless, all questions regarding religion orbit a sole body of truth--the Gospel--and are drawn by the exclusive gravitatio (Lat. source, attraction) of the Holy Trinity of Father, Son and Spirit. Inevitably, the tension mediating the summons do you believe? and the free will of the human person to choose for or against God must be confronted and reconciled. Inasmuch as the One Source was incarnated into human flesh as Jesus of Nazareth, all who follow him are obliged to incarnate his gospel. To pay lip service to the notion of the divine while, at the same time, ignoring the spiritual and intellectual reality of the person of God, imperils one's belief and salvation. The Christian's understanding of God is dependent upon his meaningful integration of spiritual and temporal realities. He cannot scuttle backwards into a cleft of unexamined nihilism, nor can he ascend a Babel of fevered human emotions. Only by encountering the God-of-Absolute-Truth in the practice (Gk. praxis) of his ordinary and humble life, can man cast the double yoke from his shoulders: his crushing anxiety of the present and incipient dread of the future. Sadly, mortal man may dawdle on the periphery of the god-question. He may choose not to reconcile the either-or of human and divine realities for the whole of his earthly life. But he cannot elude it in the next. It is no more possible for man's immortal soul to remain forever on the margin of the god-question as it is for God Himself to deny human love and suffering and hence the existence of His own Son. With or without music, every person must dance.

^[1] Cycle B /Sixth Sunday of Easter /Acts 10: 25-26, 34-35, 44-48 /1Jn 4:7-10 /Jn 15:9-17.

^[2] Cf SACRAMENTARY, "Profession of Faith", Nicene Creed (1985). The four marks of the Church: one, holy, catholic and apostolic.

^[3] Ibid., "Eucharistic Prayer II".

^[4] Ibid.

^[5] "With great delight I sat in his shadow, and his fruit was sweet my taste. He brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me was love." [SongSol 2:3-4]