With today’s Mass we enter into Passiontide, the period of Lent that pays particular attention to our Lord’s divinity and His movement toward His suffering and death in Jerusalem.

Part of our preparation includes stricter fasting. And it is for this reason that we veil our statues and crucifixes as a means of visually fasting, thus denying ourselves even the consolations these devotional images provide us.
We also fast from the use of bells in the Mass, relying instead on the harsh clacker that reminds us of the hammer blows that drove the cruel nails into our Lord’s hands and feet.
While we are preparing for our Lord’s suffering and death, we are also preparing for His glorification! We are also preparing for the new covenant that will be ushered in by His death and resurrection.
So while Passiontide is a time of even greater mortification, it is also a time of great hope!
Throughout the course of human history, our Lord has made covenants with His people. Wesee this in the stories of Noah, Abraham, Moses, and David. Unfortunately, our Lord’s
chosen people were unfaithful to these covenants.

But despite man’s infidelity, our Lord still desires to enter into a covenant with mankind. Inour first reading from the Prophet Jeremiah we hear of the new and eternal covenant that our
Lord desires to make with sinful humanity.

Unlike the old covenant, which was written upon tablets of stone, this new covenant iswritten upon the hearts of God’s people. It is etched into our souls, and it is therefore a part
of our very being.

Moreover, this new covenant with God, which we enter into through our baptism, is based onlove and fidelity – just as is a marriage between man and woman. It is a covenant that binds
us in a loving union with our Lord that will only be fully realized when we get to Heaven.

Our Lord tells us today that He will be our God, and we shall be His people. And because ofthis, we shall know Him, and He will forgive our sins and evildoing.
Moreover, while Jeremiah’s prophecy speaks only of the Israelites, we know that our Lord’scovenant is for all who are willing to love and fear Him. We see this in two ways in the
Gospel today.

First we are told in our Gospel story that Greeks are looking for Jesus, people of a Hellenisticrather than Jewish culture. And in response to their request, Jesus says: “The Father will
honor whoever serves me.”

Secondly, at the end of the Gospel Jesus states: “When I am lifted up from the earth, I willdraw everyone to myself.” So while Jesus is Jewish, He has come to save all people, and
therefore anyone can enter into a covenant with Him.

But in entering into this type of relationship with Christ, we must be willing to follow Him,which means that we must be willing to lose our life in this world, just as He did.
We must be obedient to Him and His teachings, even to the point of suffering. Jesussuffered; that’s why He came to earth. And if we are to follow Him whole-heartedly, we
must be willing to suffer also.

This is such an important point for us to remember as we consider the ways that our Catholicfaith is being attacked in our society and by our government.
Right now we are seeing only the first fruits of a persecution, but if things do not change in our society, the attacks against Holy Mother Church will intensify and become even uglier. And if they do intensify, are you ready to respond as a true Christian should?
Are you ready and willing to suffer for your Catholic faith as did our forefathers in those times and places in which it was illegal to be a Catholic? Are you willing to suffer and die rather than deny the truth of our faith?
Jesus tells us clearly today that if we wish to serve Him, we must be willing to follow Him. But let us remember that Jesus went to Calvary: the place of suffering and death. And as His followers we are called to go there too.
Even if we are not called to martyrdom as so many of the saints have been, there are many ways to suffer and die to self. Truly, we should see every form of suffering that enters our lives as an opportunity to share in Christ’s Passion and death.
What is most important is that we be willing to forget our own comfort and well being in order to follow Christ unreservedly and imitate Him in every way.
The little Lenten sacrifices that we are making now are meant to help us learn that form of selflessness that gives us the capacity for greater sufferings in the future.
But as we consider following Christ in His suffering, we must not lose sight of the hope that awaits us. For if we are called to great sufferings for the sake of Christ, we will also share in His glory!
We are given a hint of this glory in today’s Gospel as we hear the Father speak from Heaven.
With Jesus’ death on the cross comes His glorification. Christ is obedient to the Father inHis suffering and death, and thus the Father glorifies Him.
The great news is that as His faithful followers, we too are called to share in this glory – ifwe are willing to suffer and die to ourselves.
At the very least, all of us are called to die to our life of sin. We are called to crucify withinourselves all that is sinful, all that is selfish, all that is disobedient, all that is uncharitable, all
that is not of God.

We must root out all that keeps us from imitating Christ Himself. We must crucify and putto death all malice, all hatred, all pride, all worldliness, all that is not Christ-like if we want to
share in His glory.

In dying to ourselves in these ways, we will find the strength to follow Christ unreservedly –even if means we must die like one of the martyrs of old.
My friends, as we continue our preparations for Easter, examine yourself well. Are youwilling to follow Christ Jesus wherever He leads you, despite whatever suffering you might
have to endure?

Ask the Holy Spirit to enlighten you so that you may know exactly what it is within you thatneeds to die. Whatever it is – big or small – crucify it! Die to yourself and follow Christ.
And know that in doing so, you will eventually share in His glory. May our Lord bless and keep us all this Passiontide.

25 March 2012

© Reverend Timothy Reid

Fr. Reid is the pastor of St. Ann Catholic Church, Charlotte, NC

You can go directly to his homilies:
http://stanncharlotte.org/content/index.php?option=com_content&view=section&id=8&Itemid=61

Last Sunday we began the solemn vigil of Passiontide. The violet veils
covering our statues and crucifixes, as well as the silencing of the bells in lieu of the harshness of the clacker, speak of our sadness in the face of Jesus’ impending death and provide a means of intensifying our Lenten fasting.
Today the most solemn part of our Lenten journey begins: Holy Week. This week is called holy, for throughout the course of this week we will recall, through our liturgies, the Paschal Mystery: the mystery of our Lord’s suffering, death, and resurrection. Today’s reading of the Passion provides us with a prelude to all that we will experience in the coming week as we prepare for Easter, the great feast of our salvation!

One of the great lessons we learn this week is that sin has tremendous consequences. Indeed, the death of our Lord is itself the greatest witness to the consequences of sin! Jesus Christ, who is Truth, Goodness, and Beauty Incarnate, was crucified for no better reason than Man’s intractable pride.

Yet sin and its deathly consequences will not have the final word this week. No, my brothers and sisters, this is a week of victory for our Lord! As such, it is a week of hope! This week, more than ever, we hope in our own victory over sin and death! In truth, resurrection is possible for us all, but only if we maintain our hope in Him and do our best to follow His will.
So it is that in this most solemn and holy of weeks, we are called to meditate more deeply on the great gift of self that our Lord makes to mankind. For in this great act of love on the cross, we find that our Lord is willing to go to any lengths to save us.
But as we hope in our Lord, we must remember that as Christ’s disciples we are called to enter into His Paschal Mystery with Him, imitating Him in His willingness to suffer.
St. Paul tells us that if we suffer with our Lord, we shall also be glorified with Him (cf. Rom 8:17). And so we must not only meditate on our Lord’s sufferings, my brothers and sisters; we must also take part in them, for there is no other path to Heaven.
More than any other way, it is through His passion and death that Our Lord shows us just how much He loves us. But it is not enough for us to know of His love. We must return it, “for love is repaid by love alone” (St. Therese of Lisieux).
The Gospel of John tells us that: “greater love hath no man than to lay down his life for a friend” (John 15:13). And so if we truly love our Lord and wish to show our love for Him, we must be willing to lay down our lives for Him; we must suffer with Him.
Alas, suffering is hard, is it not? We resist suffering, for it requires that we go against our own nature, which desires comfort and prefers pleasure.
Yet what we will learn from this week is that suffering, though evil in itself, can bring about such great good. And in faith we must trust that if our Lord, who is Love and Goodness, allows suffering to come into our lives, it must be for our ultimate good.
In truth, every suffering that we endure is an opportunity for us to be crucified with our Lord, if we are willing to embrace it as a gift and unite it to our Lord’s suffering in prayer.
Doing so is not only an act of the will that strengthens us in virtue, it is also an act of love by which we put to death that which is sinful within us so that Christ may live and reign within us!

This week as we meditate on all that our Lord suffered for us and because of us, let us each examine ourselves so that we may know what it is within us that must be crucified. Let us also examine our own sufferings, and with the courage that God provides, let us embrace every form of suffering that comes our way as a means to put to death our personal sinfulness so that Christ may more readily live within us.

And let us live in hope, confident that the suffering and death we witness in our Lord this week will lead us all to eternal life.

01 April 2012

© Reverend Timothy Reid

Fr. Reid is the pastor of St. Ann Catholic Church, Charlotte, NC

You can go directly to his homilies:
http://stanncharlotte.org/content/index.php?option=com_content&view=section&id=8&Itemid=61

 Perhaps the most amazing pilgrimage site in the world is the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. For within this historic building are the places where our Lord was crucified and died, and where He was buried.
 Just stepping inside this most holy of places stirs up a wide range of feelings from sadness and contrition for one’s sin, to gratitude and a profound hope for one’s own resurrection from the dead. And it stirs one to love our Lord more.
 Our readings today focus us on the sadness of death and the hope of resurrection. We’re given two examples from Scripture of people miraculously being raised from the dead: one by the prophet Elijah, the other by Jesus.
 Both of these readings remind us that death doesn’t necessarily have the final word, and that as followers of Christ and believers in His word, we are called to live in the hope that someday our Lord will raise us from the dead.
 But unlike the young boy revived by Elijah or the man from the city of Nain revived by our Lord in the readings today, our hope is not to be returned to earthly life, but to be raised from the death of sin so that we might live forever in Heaven.
 Recalling St. Paul’s words to the Philippians, we must remember, brothers and sisters, that our true citizenship is in Heaven! While our earthly lives may seem long, compared to eternity they are just a blink of the eye.
 So rather than being overly occupied with earthly things, our time on earth should be spent preparing to meet our Savior! And our Gospel reminds us of why we should want to meet Him – for He has the power to save us from death!
 While probably none of us will ever be raised from the dead like these two sons of widows that we hear about today, the truth of the matter is that most of us have been spiritually dead at some point in our lives because of our sins.
 Sin alienates us from God, and if our sins are serious enough, they cut us off from our Lord’s sanctifying grace. The very worst thing that can happen to any soul is to die in a state of mortal sin, for then there is no hope of salvation – but only the pains of hell.
 Truly, the wages of sin is death (Rom 6:23). Yet, just as surely as Jesus revived the widow’s son from Nain from death, He can revive us from the death of sin through the grace of a good confession.
 When we are lost like sheep, it is in the confessional that our Lord finds us again and welcomes us back into the fold.
 Whenever we are in serious sin, most of us find our way to the confessional primarily out of the fear of hell. And this is fine. Going to confession out of a fear of hell is sufficient contrition for the sacrament to work. However this is not ideal.
 Ideally, we will approach the Sacrament of Reconciliation out of love for God and the realization that we have offended Him by our sins. This is perfect contrition.
 The more that our contrition is rooted in a true love for God rather than a fear of hell, the more deeply the graces we receive in confession can penetrate our souls and bring about the healing that will keep us from committing serious sins in the future.
 In the past two weeks I’ve challenged you to examine the way you worship our Lord at Mass and receive Him in Holy Communion, because worshiping our Lord and receiving Him in Holy Communion are the two most important things we do as Catholics.
 My goal here is to get you to examine just how much you really love our Lord because our love for the Lord is what is going to matter most on Judgment Day.
 Sadly, there are many distractions in our world today that make it easy for us to turn away from our Lord or to take Him for granted. Yet today’s readings call us to really consider all that that Lord does for us.
 The magnificence of the ineffable mystery of the Holy Trinity demands our worship. The gratuitous charity of the Eucharist demands our deepest reverence.
 And the fact that our Lord revives us from the death of sin so that we might live with Him forever demands our absolute loyalty and love.
 So how do we love our Lord? As with so many things, we can turn to the saints for an answer.
 The great mystic St. Teresa of Ávila says that loving God consists in “desiring with strong determination to please God in everything, in striving, insofar as possible, not to offend Him, and in asking Him for the advancement of the honor and glory of His Son and the increase of the Catholic Church” (cf. Interior Castle, 4.1)
 My dear brothers and sisters, do we truly give our Lord that loyalty and love that are properly His? Do we seek to please Him with everything we do, or is serving God and pleasing Him just an afterthought – or not even part of our thoughts at all?
 May we each rid ourselves of whatever attachments we have that might be offensive to our Lord, most especially any attachments to sin.
 May we all be willing to die to self and live for the Lord so that He may be more greatly honored and glorified, and so that our blessed Lord might raise us to eternal life!
09 June 2013

© Reverend Timothy Reid

Fr. Reid is the pastor of St. Ann Catholic Church, Charlotte, NC

Homilies from June 17, 2012 onward have audio.
To enable the audio, lease go directly to Fr. Reid’s homily homilies and select the matching date.

Link to Homilies:
http://stanncharlotte.org/content/index.php?option=com_content&view=section&id=8&Itemid=61

In our Catholic Tradition, we have a custom that we call the “Easter Duty.” It is the requirement as a Catholic to receive Holy Communion at least once per year.
Recognizing that one must not approach the Blessed Sacrament with any serious sins on one’s soul, it is therefore incumbent upon Catholics to also go to confession at least once per year to prepare properly for receiving our blessed Lord in Holy Communion.
As this was typically done in the past around Easter, this requirement of confessing and receiving Holy Communion became known as our “Easter Duty.”
And Holy Mother Church put this requirement in place because she desires all her children to receive the manifold graces available to us in the sacraments, most especially the forgiveness of our sins.
As I mentioned last Sunday, in these weeks leading up to the holy and penitential season of Lent, Holy Mother Church presents us with readings that focus on sin and its devastating consequences with the hope that we will realize our sins and confess them humbly.
And as was the case with last Sunday’s Gospel, today’s Gospel also draws the connection between sin and sickness.
Sin is the free, deliberate and knowing transgression of a divine law. It is an action that drives the love of God from our hearts and lives. Fundamentally, sin is an abuse of the free will that God gives us so that we are capable of loving Him and one another.
The upshot of sin is that it hurts us and those around us. Every time we sin, we injure others and ourselves; we become spiritually sick. This is the sense we get from our readings today.
Think about our responsorial psalm: “Lord, heal my soul, for I have sinned against you.” Isn’t it interesting that the psalmist doesn’t ask for forgiveness, but for healing? While we all know that we need to have our sins forgiven, we need more than just forgiveness!
Whenever we sin we need God’s healing as well. That’s because there is a connection between sin and suffering. They go hand-in-hand. Sin always produces suffering of some kind, and therefore we need both healing and forgiveness whenever we sin.
We also see this connection in the Gospel story. Today we read about the paralytic who is lowered down on a stretcher through a hole in the roof by four of his friends so that Jesus can heal him. And what does the Gospel say?
“When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, ‘Child, your sins are forgiven.” Christ sees the physical suffering of this man and knows this man needs His mercy and forgiveness. So He forgives the man’s sins and heals him of his infirmity.
And in this wonderful act, we see the absolute power God has over sin!
Keep in mind that for the Israelites, sickness of any type was due to personal sin. When thescribes heard Jesus saying to the sick man that his sins were forgiven, they very naturally
thought He was blaspheming.

As the Gospel relates, Jesus knows what’s going on in the hearts of the scribes; He knowsthey’re looking for a sign from Him. Since once cannot see forgiveness taking place, He
cures the effects of sin, proving His power to forgive sin as well.

As we consider our Lord’s power over sin, we are given much hope in our first reading, inwhich Isaiah the prophet receives a message of mercy from our Lord, who tells him not to worry about the sins of the past.
The Lord says that not only will He forgive our sins, but He will forget them. The Lord likens His mercy to a spring gushing forth in a barren desert.
And that’s the way it is with our souls when we are in sin. As we receive forgiveness in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, His mercy flows like a river through the wasteland of our sinfulness, reviving our souls and bringing us back to life.
Rescued from the eternal death that mortal sin wreaks and returned to a state of grace, our souls are then able to bear the good fruits of virtue that help us along the path to salvation and give rightful glory to God.
Knowing that the forgiveness that we find in the sacraments is the most important form of healing we can ever experience, I’ve decided to add an extra hour of confession each week to our liturgical schedule here at St. Ann’s.
So in addition to our Saturday afternoon confessions, beginning this Thursday evening, we will begin having confessions from 5:30 – 6:30 p.m. And so I invite you to come receive God’s healing mercy that soothes and cures us whenever we injure ourselves through sin.
There is one other aspect of the Gospel story today that we must not neglect: the fact that the paralytic man required the help of four friends to receive our Lord’s healing mercy.
Sin can be absolutely debilitating. It can cripple and blind us such that in the worst cases we become unable to help ourselves. As last Sunday’s Gospel story of the leper shows, sin also isolates us.
If we truly love our Lord and believe in His mercy, and if we truly love our fellow man and hope for his salvation as well as our own, then we must be willing to pick up those paralyzed by their sins and take them to Jesus.
We do this by being willing to provide encouragement, sound advice, and fraternal correction to those whom we know are in sin. Of course this must be done with a gentleness and love that are readily apparent to our erring brethren, and not with judgment or condescension.
But as our Gospel also shows, getting the paralyzed sinner to Christ often requires great effort. Sometimes when we approach our loved ones about their sins, they become angry or resistant.
In those cases we must pray and fast for them; we must be willing to suffer for them. At times strong words said in love may be needed to bring a hardened sinner to repentance.
What is most important is that we remember that it is in being steadfastly charitable thatGod’s grace is best able to work through us for the sake of the sinner.
Our sacrifices, prayers, and willingness to suffer for the sake of another so often procure thegrace that breaks through the roof of pride and recalcitrance guarding the heart of the serious
sinner so that he might have an encounter with our Lord’s healing mercy.

Brothers and sisters, as we prepare to enter into the holy and penitential season of Lent thisweek, let us examine ourselves well so that we might know our sins and humbly confess
them.

But let us be willing, as well, to help our erring brethren paralyzed by their sins. With greatcharity and patience, let us be willing to pick them up and take them to Jesus so that they, too, might come to experience His healing mercy.

19 February 2012

© Reverend Timothy Reid

Fr. Reid is the pastor of St. Ann Catholic Church, Charlotte, NC

You can go directly to his homilies:
http://stanncharlotte.org/content/index.php?option=com_content&view=section&id=8&Itemid=61

 The season of Lent is often viewed with some amount of drear and dread because of the obligations it places upon us to fast and do penance.

 Moreover, from Lent’s opening call on Ash Wednesday to remember that we are dust and unto dust we shall return, until the somber celebration of our Lord’s Passion on Good Friday, Holy Mother Church focuses our attention on our need to repent.
 The readings and prayers of Lent exhort us to examine ourselves, to recall our sins, to do the painful work of making reparation for those sins, and to discipline ourselves through prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.
 Indeed, Lent makes us uncomfortable. It forces some amount of unpleasantness upon us. It requires that we delve into our personal darkness – our sins and faults that we’d just as soon forget – and to deal with them.
 While this is not an easy or pleasant task, it is a task that is very necessary if we wish to go to Heaven. To be sure, all that is dark and sinful within us must be brought to the light if we dare hope to be saved.
 But amidst the darkness and suffering that we often associate with Lent, there is actually much light and joy to be found. And it is this light and joy that we celebrate on this day, which we call Laetare Sunday. The word laetare means “rejoice.”
 And we rejoice, in part, because we are now halfway through Lent – and thus we use the color rose to symbolize our lightening of penance today.
 But we also rejoice because our readings today remind us that while it is true that we are all sinners, God is rich in mercy! We rejoice because God desires to save us from our sins, despite how terribly sinful we often are!
 Today we rejoice that even in the darkness of the gravest of mortal sins, God desires to give us light! Our readings bear witness to this wonderful truth.
 In our first reading from 2nd Chronicles, we read how the terrible sins of the Israelites brought about their exile to Babylon in the 6th century BC. This reading reminds us that sin has consequences, both in this life and in the life to come.
 Like a good Father, our Lord tried to correct His chosen people through the prophets, but they turned a deaf ear to them. And so our Lord allowed the Jews to reap the terrible consequences of their sinfulness, in hopes of bringing about their repentance.
 But while our Lord knew that punishment was necessary, He did not allow His own to suffer forever. Thus, the Israelite’s Chaldean captors were overthrown by Cyrus the Great, who then granted the Jews permission to return home and rebuild the Temple.
 What we learn for this story is that while our Lord allows us to suffer the consequences of our sins in this life as a means of correcting us, He deeply desires to save us from the consequences of our sins in the next life. Thus He calls to us constantly to repent!
 God hates sin, for sin is the perfect antithesis to Him. Yet as much as our Lord hates sin, He loves to show us His mercy, and He does so willingly!
 Indeed, our Catholic faith teaches that no one is ever beyond God’s mercy! While all of us are capable of committing terrible sins, there is no sin that God’s mercy cannot overcome. There is no sin our Lord will not forgive if we are but sorry for it.
 In the Gospel today Jesus explains that it is precisely because of God’s desire to show us His mercy that He came to earth.
 Jesus tells us today in the Gospel of how some people prefer darkness to light because of their evil works.
 Because of this desire for darkness on the part of so many people, because of our constant falling into sin, because of the weakness of human flesh that is unable to withstand the wickedness and snares of the devil, the Father sent Jesus to save us.
 Even though we have selfishly rebelled against the One Who created us, Who sustains us in being, and Who died for us, our Lord never loses His hope for us. He never ceases trying to save us from our sins.
 Not only does our Lord forgive us our sins when we are truly sorry for them, but through the Sacraments He gives us His grace that strengthens us against future sins so that we may learn to choose Him and His will over the path of darkness set out before us by the devil.
 While sin often promises us pleasure of some sort, it is in choosing the light of God’s grace and mercy, it is in being forgiven of our sins in Confession that we find true joy.
 However, my brothers and sisters, if you want to experience the joy that endures, it is not enough simply to repent and receive God’s mercy. If we want joy that endures, then we must share the gift of God’s mercy with others.
 We do this through our acts of charity: giving food and drink to the poor, clothing the naked, visiting the sick and imprisoned, sheltering the homeless, and burying the dead.
 But just as important as these corporal works of mercy are what we call the spiritual works of mercy: counseling the doubtful, instructing the ignorant, admonishing sinners, comforting the afflicted, praying for the living and dead, bearing wrongs patiently, and perhaps most importantly: forgiving offenses.
 If we wish to live in the joy that God’s mercy provides, then these works of mercy must be habits for us, for showing mercy in these ways ensures that God’s mercy takes deep root within our souls.
 Performing these works of mercy with love for God and gratitude to Him for His mercy helps us, little by little, to become more like Him.
 Brothers and sisters, we are called today to rejoice in the great gift of salvation that comes to us through God’s grace and mercy. However, if we hope to enjoy this gift for all eternity, we must live in the light of Truth: repenting of our sins and asking for God’s mercy. We must also be willing to share that mercy with others.
 As we move into the second half of Lent, let us all examine our souls well. Let us not fear to delve into our own personal darkness and sin, but with confidence in God’s mercy, let us confess our sins and make reparation for them.
 Moreover, let us renew our pledge to share God’s love and mercy with others through the corporal and spiritual works of mercy.
 While the Lenten works of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving may bring about some discomfort and pain in our lives, let us always remember that it is far better to suffer for our sins in this life rather than in the next.
18 March 2012

© Reverend Timothy Reid

Fr. Reid is the pastor of St. Ann Catholic Church, Charlotte, NC

You can go directly to his homilies:
http://stanncharlotte.org/content/index.php?option=com_content&view=section&id=8&Itemid=61

In the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC, there is an altar dedicated to St. Catherine of Siena, and above the bronze statue of St. Catherine is a quote we hear in today’s Gospel: “Zeal for your house will consume me.”

Indeed, as we look through the annals of Church history, it is difficult to find a saint more zealous for our Lord than St. Catherine of Siena. We are blessed to have an image of her receiving the Rosary and a crown of thorns from our infant Lord in the first window on the left side of the church.
A miracle worker, counselor, peace-maker, stigmatist, and mystic all-in-one, St. Catherine is of those saints who truly shaped the course of the Church’s history, most decidedly by bringing the popes back to Rome after nearly 70 years of residing in Avignon.
While we could talk for hours about the miraculous life of St. Catherine, what is most important to understand about her is that she simply burned with the fire of God’s love, and it was this love for God that impelled her to live as she did.
Constantly ridiculed, mocked, looked down upon, and even tried as a heretic at one point, St. Catherine often suffered in very public ways. She also suffered from many physical ailments and constant pain from her stigmata.
But St. Catherine never let her sufferings get in the way of being one of Christ’s faithful and steadfast disciples. Rather, in her great zeal for our Lord and His Church, she simply united her sufferings to His, and found great strength and consolation in this union of suffering.
In our second reading today we are told that as Christians we are called to “proclaim Christ crucified.” In saying that we proclaim Christ crucified, we are recognizing the value of His Passion and death, and we, in turn, must embrace suffering and self-denial as a means of uniting ourselves with His Passion and death so that our Lord’s love may become known.
Thus, cultivating zeal within ourselves is so necessary, for it is our zeal for our Lord that leads us to the willingness to suffer and deny ourselves so that we proclaim Christ crucified.
In our zeal we should look for ways to die to self so that Christ may live within us. The holy season of Lent reminds us that we should turn to fasting, penance and almsgiving as ways to die to ourselves. But these aren’t the only ways to proclaim Christ crucified.
Simply practicing acts of charity, forgiving those who have harmed us in any way, and offering up our sufferings – no matter how big or small – are also great ways of proclaiming Christ crucified with our lives.
Living according to the commandments, which are given to us in the first reading, is another way to proclaim Christ crucified. These commandments, given by God Himself, should form the basis of morality not simply for Christians, but for all people because they come from God Himself.
Sadly our passions and feelings often lead us into sin, and thus, living according to these commandments requires that we put to death that part of us that desires sin, that we say no to our own selfish will so that we may live united to God’s most holy will.
But in today’s world, there is even more we must do. As Providence would have it, we are now living in a time and place when there are lots of opportunities to proclaim Christ crucified with great zeal because of the persecution that’s being leveled against us as Catholics.
So much of what we believe as Catholics seems like foolishness to the world, and because of this we are now being told by our government through the recent HHS mandate that we will
now have to violate certain tenets of our faith, even though our constitution provides protection from this type of governmental interference in the practice of our faith.
While it is a terrible thing that the Obama Administration is trampling upon ourconstitutional rights as Catholic Americans, we must see in this dire situation a great opportunity for growth in holiness, if we are zealous enough to seize this opportunity!
While none of us enjoys persecution, if we are willing to endure the persecution and fight forwhat we know is true, good, and beautiful – namely all that our Church teaches and believes – then we will hasten our personal sanctification and grow in holiness.
In looking at today’s Gospel we see Jesus getting angry with the money changers because oftheir complete lack of respect for God.
Jesus was upset because the money changers were using the Temple as a place of commerceand not a place of worship. They were using religion for personal gain. They had no respect for God’s law – they just sought to benefit from it. So He drove them out, and rightly so.
In the same way, we must work to drive out of our society all that is contrary to God’s law,all that is sinful and therefore displeasing to God. Coming up this May we in North Carolina will have an opportunity to do just that with regard to one important issue.
Hopefully by now you know that there is a marriage amendment on the May 8th electionballot that would enshrine in our state constitution the historic definition of marriage as being exclusively between one man and one woman.
The bishops of our state, Bishop Jugis and Bishop Burbidge, are urging all Catholics in NorthCarolina to vote “YES” to this amendment in order to protect marriage from being redefined by future legislative or judicial actions.
Those opposed to this amendment are saying that it is an act of bigotry and discrimination tosame-sex couples, who are being accorded the right to marry in other states.
But let’s understand something: nothing revealed by Christ and taught by His Churchthrough Sacred Scripture and Tradition can be bigoted or discriminatory. God is not a bigot!
While all people have a right to get married, having the right to marriage does not accord onethe right to redefine marriage. Marriage is what marriage is. It’s defined by God.
Think for a moment how ridiculous it would be for someone to say I want to redefine whattrees are so that the definition of trees includes telephone poles.
They could point out the similarities of how telephone poles are tall and slender and made ofwood, just like trees. With this in mind, they could insist that we must all treat telephone poles just like we treat trees.
While this comparison yields some truth, namely that telephone poles are indeed tall andslender and made of wood, telephone poles, nevertheless, lack the essential quality of trees: that trees are living and capable of reproducing, and because of this trees are beautiful!
Because they are devoid of fruit and foliage like trees, telephone poles are never beautiful.
The same is true of same sex unions. While they may provide some comfort and benefits tothose involved, they are by their nature as sterile and lifeless as telephone poles, and therefore they can never be a true marriage, and thus cannot be defined as such.
For us to vote on May 8th to reaffirm the truth of marriage is not an act of bigotry or discrimination. We are not denying anyone their civil rights. Voting “YES” on thisamendment is an act of charity, for it will help others to come to know and abide by the truth of what marriage really is.
Brothers and sisters, we are called today to proclaim Christ crucified. Sometimes when we do so, it means that we, too, may be crucified. But consumed with zeal for our Lord and His Church, let us courageously stand up for what we know to be true, good, and beautiful.
May our Lord bless us and protect us as we seek to do His will and lead others to the knowledge of His truth.
St. Catherine of Siena, pray for us!

© Reverend Timothy Reid

Fr. Reid is the pastor of St. Ann Catholic Church, Charlotte, NC

You can go directly to his homilies:
http://stanncharlotte.org/content/index.php?option=com_content&view=section&id=8&Itemid=61

11 March 2012

Although we may not realize it, all of us who have been baptized in the Catholic Church have received an exorcism, albeit what we call a minor exorcism. This is because the Church has always understood baptism to be a matter of spiritual warfare.
Thus, part of the baptismal liturgy consists in praying that the person who is about to be baptized be freed from the snares and wickedness of the evil one, as well as make a renunciation of satan, his works, and all his empty promises.
Marked by that original sin of our first parents, all of us were born in darkness. And our baptism is the first volley of sacramental grace to enter our souls and make war on the darkness of sin.
Indeed, one of the very first things that happens in a baptism is that the child is marked out for Christ with the sign of the cross. In this way the child to be baptized is snatched from the hands of the evil one and claimed for Christ.
This action of marking with the sign of the cross is repeated in the baptismal liturgy with both the Oil of Catechumens and the Chrism Oil, again making the point that this child no longer belongs to darkness, but belongs to Jesus Christ.
Both our first and second reading today call to mind baptism with the story of Noah and how he and his family spent 40 days in the ark while the earth was flooded to cleanse it of sin. As St. Peter tells us today, this story prefigures baptism, which saves us from sin and darkness.
But while our baptism forgives our sins, we are still left with a scar from the original sin. And so while our baptism marks us out for Christ and enters us into a covenantal relationship with our Lord, we still must contend with the powers of darkness throughout our lives.
Indeed, throughout our lives, all of us engage in spiritual warfare, most generally through the temptations that the devil and his demons provoke within us. We see in our Gospel today that not even Jesus Christ Himself was safe from the wiles and temptations of satan.
This story of Jesus being tempted in the desert follows upon His baptism by St. John. Driven by the Holy Spirit, Jesus lives amongst the wild beasts of the desert, fasting and praying, as a means of preparing for His public ministry.
Since ancient times Holy Mother Church has looked upon Jesus’ 40-day sojourn in the desert as a model for all Christians to follow in preparation for the glorious feast of Easter.
But the Church also recognizes that our annual 40-day journey through the Lenten desert is not simply a memorial of this particular story in the life of Jesus. Lent is a time of particular imitation of our Lord.
So just as our dear Lord prayed, fasted, and did penance during His 40 days in the desert, so too do we pray, fast, and do penance in Lent as a means of becoming more like Him.
But even more poignantly, the Church recognizes the season of Lent as being a particular time to engage in spiritual warfare.
This past week on Ash Wednesday, the opening prayer was: “Grant, O Lord, that we may begin with holy fasting this campaign of Christian service, so that, as we take up battle against spiritual evils, we may be armed with weapons of self-restraint.”
Thus, the prayer of the Church is clear that all that we do during Lent: our prayer, fasting, and alms giving, are means for us to defeat the power of evil in our lives so that we may be prepared not only for Easter, but for an eternity of bliss in Heaven!
It is interesting to note that both the Old and New Testaments begin with a story of temptation. The Old Testament tells us the story of the temptation of Adam and Eve in the Garden, while the New Testament begins with the Gospel story we hear today.
However, these two temptation stories end in vastly different ways. Whereas the story of Adam and Eve’s temptation ends with their seduction by evil and the corruption of the entire human race, save our Lord and His Immaculate Mother, the story of Jesus’ temptation in the desert ends in His victory.
From the first temptation story came an inheritance of evil that, to this day, continues to threaten all men. From the second temptation story comes the prelude to our Lord’s final victory over sin and death that brings about man’s redemption.
To be sure, in defeating satan in the desert, our Lord wins a victory for all of us. And with our Lord’s grace, each of us can now defeat the evil one when he is tempting us. Whenever temptations come, we must call upon our Lord in the desert and ask Him for the grace to conquer. We must not rely on our own strength alone, for alone we are sure to fail.
To defeat the power of the evil one in our lives, the saints teach us that we must be humble and contrite of heart so that our Lord’s grace can work within us and through us. It is only by relying on God’s strong grace working through us that we can overcome evil in our lives.
However, while it is Christ’s grace that wins the victory over temptation and sin, we must cooperate with His grace. We must join our wills with His holy will, for while the evil one is able to deceive our minds, he has absolutely no power over our will, which is the faculty by which we choose good or evil.
The evil one is able to lie to us, presenting evil as a good to our minds, but he cannot force our wills to do anything.
That is precisely why the acts of prayer, fasting, and alms giving are a means of waging spiritual battle. Through these holy acts that require self-sacrifice, we learn to control our passions and strengthen our wills so that we can learn to align our wills with His.
As that opening prayer from Ash Wednesday tells us, our Lenten acts of prayer, fasting, and alms giving arm us with weapons of self-restraint that help us say no to the sinful passions and desires within us that the evil one preys upon.
Moreover, when we take on these acts with great love, they help us to become more like our Lord, who sacrificed Himself for us. They help us unite ourselves to God ever more deeply so that we want to follow His will rather than our own.
My dear brothers and sisters, all of us must face this world with its seductions. All of us at times are tempted by the evil one to commit sin. He does this to weaken and ultimately destroy the covenantal relationship we enjoy with our Lord through the sacraments.
But if we are willing to pray, fast, and give alms out of love for our Lord, if we nurture our hearts so that they always remain humble and contrite, then God’s grace will work through us to help us defeat the power of evil in our lives.
Every time we say no to temptation, we share in this same victory that we see Christ win over satan in the Gospel today.
Therefore, may we take on the Lenten practices of prayer, fasting, and alms giving with great joy and determination, trusting that God’s grace will be sufficient in all our times of trial.

26 February 2012

© Reverend Timothy Reid

Fr. Reid is the pastor of St. Ann Catholic Church, Charlotte, NC

You can go directly to his homilies:
http://stanncharlotte.org/content/index.php?option=com_content&view=section&id=8&Itemid=61

My dear brothers and sisters, do you realize how much God loves you? Do you have any idea at all how much our Lord desires for you to be with Him in Heaven for all eternity?

Not only has He created us in His own image and likeness out of an act of love, not only does He sustain us in being throughout our lives, but He became one of us and died for us and because of us so that we might be saved.
And if that weren’t enough, He gives us Himself as real food and drink in the Eucharist, and throughout our lives He provides us with every grace we need to be saved.
Truly, Sacred Scripture is nothing else if not one long story of the love God has for man – unworthy of that love as we may be.
And even though we fall into sin daily – offending Him and separating ourselves from Him and His mystical body – He never ceases to call us back, extending His mercy to us whenever we show sorrow for our sins.
During this time of year, as we approach the holy and penitential season of Lent, Holy Mother Church prepares us by providing readings that focus on the nature of sin and its devastating consequences.
The purpose of these readings is to help us understand sin and its terrible consequences with the hope that we’ll seek ongoing conversion during Lent, and thereby be prepared properly for Easter.
In meditating on sin and its consequences, our readings today make a couple of very important points for us to consider. The first point is that sin separates us. The second point is that when we do separate ourselves through sin, God desires to reconcile with us.
Today’s readings make an analogy between sin and leprosy, teaching us that sin is really a most terrible illness. Now keep in mind that to the Israelites, leprosy wasn’t simply a terrible and disfiguring disease. It had a moral connotation as well.
Physical ailments and illnesses, especially leprosy, were seen as manifestations of evil or sin. They were often thought to be the result of divine punishment for sin and symbolized a lack of integrity or wholeness in the afflicted person.
Leprosy is also a good analogy for sin because not only did it cause the leper to be separated from the community, but leprosy also deformed and disfigured its victims. Sin does the same thing! Sin disfigures our souls so that we become less of who we are called by God to be!
In short, sin makes us ugly.
The point that our Lord makes today to Moses and Aaron is that those who contract leprosymust live apart from the community. The spiritual symbolism of this statement is obvious,
because sin does the same thing: it separates us from God and from the Body of Christ.

This separation from God is really the saddest element of sin, and in the afterlife thecomplete and utter separation from God with no hope for reconciliation will be the most
hellish part of hell.

As we consider the afterlife, I think there are two things that will really surprise us all onJudgment Day: 1) how awful and offensive to God our sins really are (even those sin we
think are small and inconsequential), and 2) how incredibly merciful God really is.

We get a small taste of His mercy in the Gospel today. A leper – perhaps covered withhorrible sores and pustules – approaches Jesus, and in a moment of both bold faith and humble supplication, he begs to be made clean.
And moved with pity, Jesus stretches out His hand, touches him, and says: “I do will it. Be made clean.” And immediately the leprosy left him.
Sadly, the newly cleansed leper didn’t obey our Lord’s request to keep this matter to himself, but rather he publicized it, making it much more difficult for Jesus to conduct His ministry.
Of course Jesus knew the leper would do this, but in His clemency He healed him all the same – showing forth just how merciful He truly is. And He’s the same with us!
Every time we come to Mass we say: “Lord, I am not worthy that You should enter under my roof, but only say the word, and my soul shall be healed.”
Whether we sense it or not, Jesus says to us: “I do will it. May your soul be healed!” Then He gives to us the perfect remedy for our souls: the Eucharist, which provides forgiveness for our venial sins and helps to strengthen us against future mortal sins.
And He does this knowing full well that we will all sin again by our own choice. Because of His great mercy, He never wearies of our infidelities.
But does that mean we have a license to sin at will? Of course not. To do so would be to commit the sin of presumption. No, brothers and sisters, our response to such goodness is to strive with all our might to be pleasing to God.
Our opening prayer today teaches us that God abides “in hearts that are just and true,” and therefore we must beg our Lord to fashion us by His grace into dwelling places pleasing to Him.
But while holiness comes through God’s grace, we must choose to cooperate, for God will not make us holy without our consent or without our personal effort.
Moreover, we must understand that holiness does not come about just through simple avoidance of sin. Holiness, my brothers and sisters, comes about through perseverance in prayer and in trying to live virtuously.
We become holy by humbly recognizing our sins and confessing them honestly. We become holy by turning away from our sins, and joining in communion with the Body of Christ. We become holy by earnestly seeking to do God’s will – as best we know it – and nothing else.
Thus, if we humbly approach our Lord, repent of our sins, and ask for forgiveness, God will give it to us. His deepest desire is that all of us be made clean from the stain of sin so that we can enjoy eternal life with Him in heaven! With God forgiveness is always readily available.
While some sins are certainly worse than others, there is no sin that God will not forgive. But in order for us to be forgiven, we must recognize that what we’ve done is wrong, be sorry about it, confess it completely, and try not to commit that sin again.
My dear friends, soon Lent will be upon us. As we prepare for this holy season, let us be conscious of our sins and seek God’s mercy. Like the leper in the Gospel today, let us ask God to make us clean, and let us trust that He will do it.
God loves us more than we can imagine, my brothers and sisters. Let us strive to live our lives in a way that shows just how much we love Him in return.
12 February 2012

© Reverend Timothy Reid

Fr. Reid is the pastor of St. Ann Catholic Church, Charlotte, NC

You can go directly to his homilies:
http://stanncharlotte.org/content/index.php?option=com_content&view=section&id=8&Itemid=61

One of the great blessings of my life was to grow up in close proximity to all of my grandparents. In fact, from the time I was 6 or 7 until she died when I was 20, my maternal grandmother lived with my family.

My grandmother had debilitating arthritis that left her completely bedridden for the last 18 years of her life, and because my grandfather was unable to provide the care she needed in his final years, she came to stay with us.
As my grandmother required 24-hour care, my siblings and I were all expected to help out, and we did our best to normalize life for our disabled grandmother. Consequently, a large part of my childhood was spent sitting with her, talking with her, and caring for her.
But although my grandmother required a great deal of time and energy, I don’t think any of us minded at all because we all knew that what Grandma had to give back to us was so much more valuable than the energy and time we expended in caring for her.
Outside of the normal things that grandmothers provide their grandchildren in terms of love, care, and wisdom, my grandmother taught my siblings and me the value and dignity that can be found in human suffering.
Perhaps that sounds a bit odd to some of you that suffering has value and can confer dignity on someone. Isn’t suffering an evil that we should eliminate or at least lessen if we can?
The short answer to that question is: Yes! Suffering is an evil, and yes, we should try to eliminate or lessen the sufferings of others if it lies within our power.
But sometimes we can’t do anything about suffering. Sometimes suffering simply has to be endured. And if that’s the case, then we must seek to profit from our suffering, drawing from it the great virtues that are to be had when we embrace it.
For while suffering can be the most difficult of companions in life, suffering is not without its gifts for those willing to bear with it. Suffering is also one of life’s best teachers to those whose eyes and ears are open to its lessons.
Our readings today confront us with God’s power in the face of suffering. The prophet Isaiah speaks in beautiful terms today about the saving power of God, a power that opens the eyes of the blind, clears the ears of the deaf, and allows the mute tongue to sing.
And in the 7th chapter of Mark we witness our Lord healing the deaf man with the speech impediment in the district of the Decapolis.
In this Gospel story as Jesus touches the deaf man’s ears and tongue, he says the Greek word Ephphatha, which means: “be opened.” This is a gesture that is often repeated at baptisms to symbolize the spiritual healing we all need to facilitate our reception of the Faith and to prepare us to share our Faith with others.
In a larger context, I think the Ephphatha prayer to “be opened” is a call for us to be open to how our Lord desires to heal us, trusting that our Lord will always do what is best for us.
Indeed, one of the things we learn from today’s readings is that God desires to aid us in our weaknesses.
While those with physical disabilities tend to stand out amongst those in need of healing, the truth of the matter is that all of us, no matter how healthy we may think we are, are in need of some type of healing.
For all of us are born with the supreme form of ailment: original sin. And every time we sin, or someone sins against us, we sustain emotional and, more seriously, spiritual injuries.
Just as physical and emotional ailments can prevent us from living life fully, and in the worse cases can lead to death, spiritual ailments can also keep us from living life as God intends us to live it, and in the worse cases cause spiritual death, which is the loss of eternal life.
As we consider the woundedness and its accompanying suffering that is part of the human condition, we must remember that our blessed Lord understands it all, for He, too, suffered greatly in His passion and death. The crucifix is our constant reminder of His suffering.
The difference, of course, between our Lord’s suffering and our own is that Jesus suffered not because of any sin on His own part, but only because of the sins of others. We cannot say the same for our own suffering.
As Christians called to follow our Lord and imitate Him in every way, we are sometimes called by our Lord to share in His Passion. Sometimes our Lord invites us to walk with Him up the steep path of Calvary, helping to shoulder the cross, and He does so for many reasons.
Sometimes our Lord allows us to share in His Passion so that we can grow in virtue – like humility or courage; sometimes He invites us to share in His passion to make reparation for sin; sometimes He desires our suffering to be offered as a prayer to benefit other souls; and sometimes Jesus invites us into His passion just to become closer to Him.
What we have to realize, though, is that everything that we suffer in life, big or small, is an opportunity to unite ourselves to our Lord and to become more like Him.
All suffering is an opportunity for us to identify with our crucified savior and thereby participate in His great work of redemption.
If our eyes and ears are open to the possibilities of faith, we will learn to see all suffering in this light: viz., as an opportunity to grow in holiness and prepare ourselves for Heaven!
But even though suffering can have positive benefits for us when we endure it with faith, it’s also good for us to pray for our suffering to be alleviated. That’s a good and holy prayer! But as I mentioned earlier, we must be open to how our Lord desires to heal us.
When our Lord heals us of our suffering, He does so to strengthen our faith. And if He doesn’t take away our suffering, it’s either because He’s testing our faith or because the suffering itself is meant to heal something else within us or to benefit another soul.
But whatever the answer to our prayer, we are called to be faithful and persevere.
Moreover, we must learn gratitude in the face of suffering. Because whether or not our Lordalleviates our suffering as we wish, it’s all a gift to help us grow in holiness. And so we must
always try to accept our sufferings with love, not bitterness, and with faith, not fear.

If we can do this, trusting that our Lord will give us the necessary grace to bear whateverburdens He allows to come our way, it is then that we will truly grow in holiness and begin to
bear His likeness.

Brothers and sisters, none of us enjoys suffering. But suffering is a part of our humancondition. It’s something that we must all learn to bear.
And so if you find yourself suffering in some way, do not despair and do not be bitter. Whileour gracious Lord may not have explicitly willed for this suffering to come into your life, He
is allowing it for the benefit of your soul – and possibly the benefit of others souls.

So as true followers of Christ, let us have hope in the face of our sufferings: hope that if webear our sufferings well and unite them to our Lord’s suffering on the cross, we will become
a little more like Him and become a little better prepared for Heaven.

Through our Lady’s gracious intercession, may we all be patient, persevering, and always faithful to God in our times of trial.
09 September 2012

© Reverend Timothy Reid

Fr. Reid is the pastor of St. Ann Catholic Church, Charlotte, NC

Homilies from June 17, 2012 onward have audio .
To enable the audio, please go directly to Fr. Reid’s homily homilies and select the matching date.

Link to Homilies:
http://stanncharlotte.org/content/index.php?option=com_content&view=section&id=8&Itemid=61

 To my right – in between St. Clare and St. Rita – is our statue of St. Teresa of Ávila. She was a Spanish Carmelite nun who lived from 1515 – 1582, and she is without a doubt one of the most remarkable women to ever walk this earth.

 Along with St. John of the Cross, it is St. Teresa who has taught the Church how to pray. To her were granted some of the most intense ecstatic spiritual experiences man has ever known, and through her writings she has passed along to us the means for uniting oneself with God.
 Moreover, her writings are of such importance and value to the Church that St. Teresa of Ávila was the first female saint to be named a doctor of the Church. It is for this reason that we have her depicted with the Holy Spirit over her shoulder and the doctor’s hat on her head.
 But Teresa wasn’t always the saintly mystic that we know her to be. In fact, Teresa wrote that she felt like she wasted much of her first 20 years in the convent.
 Because she was vivacious and out-going, Teresa was often asked to entertain guests of the convent, and she developed tendencies toward vanity and gossip. For many different reasons, she even gave up praying for a time during the first half of her religious life.
 While perhaps she wasn’t the most terrible of sinners, St. Teresa claims that it wasn’t until she was over 40 that she had a true conversion and began seeking holiness in earnest.
 And we are all blessed that she did, for our Catholic Church would be all the more impoverished had St. Teresa not accepted God’s call to holiness, which ultimately led to so many great works on her part, and to the sanctification of so many who have followed her.
 Truly, deep interior conversion, like what St. Teresa experienced, is vitally important for all of us, for just one person can lead an entire society to conversion, just as we see in our first reading today.
 Today we hear about Jonah, who is called by God to preach a message of conversion to the inhabitants of Nineveh, explaining to them that God plans to destroy them for their wickedness. And because they listen and repent, God spares Nineveh from His wrath.
 In our Gospel today we see Jesus preaching a message of conversion to the people of Galilee, calling them to “repent, and believe in the Gospel” – and of course many of them did!
 Added to this message of conversion and repentance in our readings today is the sense of urgency we get from St. Paul, who urges the Corinthians to change their lives while there is still time to do so.
 It seems providential to me that we have these readings on repentance today as our country marks the 39th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, the Supreme Court ruling legalizing abortion. While there are many moral ills in our society, none is more heinous than abortion.
 Truly, abortion represents the very worst part of our society, for it shows a willingness to murder the most innocent and vulnerable of persons – often for purely selfish reasons.
 So we must pray and work for an end to this horrendous scourge, all the while praying for the victims of this barbarity, as well as for those who support abortion or work within the abortion industry.
 The anti-life, pro-abortion lobby in this country consistently promotes abortion as a woman’s fundamental right. They promote abortion as an answer to the “problem” of an unplanned pregnancy (as if a pregnancy is a pathology), and thus many women turn to abortion in times of fear and confusion.
 Like most priests who have served for a while in large cities, I’ve endured many heart- rending confessions by post-abortive women harboring terrible guilt and remorse.
 While it is true that abortion is a most terrible sin, we mustn’t turn our backs on these women or on the men who pushed them toward abortion. Instead we must pray for their healing.
 Our Lord is gentle and kind, my friends. He is always merciful to the repentant sinner, and so should we be, bearing in mind that all of us are sinners in need of God’s mercy.
 But in addition to being merciful to those who chose abortion, we must look for ways to prevent abortion by providing support to those vulnerable pregnant women who have no means of supporting their unborn child.
 Of course here in Charlotte we are blessed to have Room at the Inn who does such great work on behalf of these vulnerable women so that abortion doesn’t have to be a woman’s only choice when faced with an unplanned pregnancy.
 We must also put pressure on abortion mills to close through peaceful demonstration, which we can do through campaigns like 40 Days for Life.
 Furthermore, as I recently mentioned in the bulletin, as Catholics we are morally bound to vote only for pro-life political candidates – which is an issue we must seriously consider as we prepare for the elections later this year.
 But there’s one other thing we must also do: and that is make reparation for this terrible sin. Reparation is a spiritual practice by which we try, in some measure, to make up for the damage we’ve caused by our sin. It’s our means of showing God that we’re sorry for our sins.
 As such, reparation is a means of restoring justice. Whenever we sin, we offend our all-good God; we commit an injustice toward Him. Reparation is the way we make up for this injustice.
 This is precisely why priests give us a penance whenever we go to confession. The penance we perform after a confession is how we make reparation for the sins we confessed.
 But when it comes to abortion, we must remember that this terrible evil is not just the sin of those who perform the abortions or of those who have them. It’s a societal sin because we fund it through our tax dollars, and soon we will be funding abortifacient drugs through our insurance premiums. Whether we like it or not, we all cooperate with it in some way now.
 And it is time for us who are people of faith and who know that abortion is a grave evil to stand together and pray for our country – to make reparation for this terrible sin.
 This we can do through the offering extra prayers for an end to abortion and other threats to life; this we can do through voluntary penances and fasting.
 Simply denying oneself something that one enjoys – like sweets, or wine, or coffee – or by taking on chores that we don’t enjoy and offering that sacrifice up to our Lord as a means of making reparation for our sins, is a powerful and effective way to pray.
 What matters most is not the act itself, but rather the love for God with which we do the penitential act.
 My brothers and sisters, we live in the most blessed country our world has ever known. But our greatness as a country has been severely compromised by some of the sins we pass off as “human rights” – most especially abortion.
 While I don’t know if our Lord plans to destroy our country for its sinfulness, as He planned with Nineveh, I do know that the sin of abortion greatly offends Him, and that we should do what we can now to show Him how sorry we are that our country allows it to continue.
 Moreover, we must all seek constant conversion and repentance, and thereby grow in holiness, so that we might become fishers of men.
 May God bless our country and save us from our sins. St. Teresa of Ávila, pray for us.

22 January 2012

© Reverend Timothy Reid

Fr. Reid is the pastor of St. Ann Catholic Church, Charlotte, NC

You can go directly to his homilies:
http://stanncharlotte.org/content/index.php?option=com_content&view=section&id=8&Itemid=61