The Feast of the Epiphany calls forth many familiar Scriptural images: the searching Magi from the East upon their camels and dromedaries; the infant Jesus hidden still with Joseph and Mary in Bethlehem; the gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh; and of course the brilliant star that made this unlikely gathering of Messiah and Magi possible.
At first glance our Gospel story today may sound like a rather odd but pleasant encounter in the early days of our Lord’s life on earth.
But in faith we know that this encounter between the Wise Men and Wisdom Itself was no chance encounter, nor was it an expedition of whim or a flight of fancy by the Magi.
This meeting that we celebrate with our liturgy today was part of the Father’s greater plan for the salvation of all mankind.
Two weeks ago today we celebrated the birth of our God in human form. For the past two weeks of this lovely Christmas Season we have continued celebrating the fact that the Word was made flesh and has dwelt among us.
During this Christmas Season we have meditated upon the Eternal Word of the Father, born in time, born of Mary ever-Virgin, as He remained hidden in Bethlehem.
But today the virgin-born Son of God is acknowledged by the whole world in the persons of the Magi. Today the mysterious presence of God-made-man, the Messiah, is hidden no longer but rather manifested to all humanity, Jew and Gentile alike.
In a sense, this manifestation of His divine kingship is the warning shot by our now-human Lord in His fight against satan and the demonic minions, the fight for the souls of all men.
Today the Lord says: “I have come to rescue fallen man from the clutches of evil, and I will not remain silent forever. For soon I will begin to extend my gentle kingship of love and truth and mercy upon all of mankind so that may see and know that there is indeed a light shining in the darkness, a light that the darkness cannot overcome.”
And like a venomous snake cornered, the evil one – in a rage that knows no bounds – seeks to destroy the Christ Child through the wicked Herod, a rage that ends the lives of so many young children whom we now call the Holy Innocents.
So you see, my dear brothers and sisters, today’s feast of the Epiphany really sets the stage for the larger battle that is yet to come. Today Jesus is revealed as God, a revelation that we see repeated in His baptism and at the wedding feast of Cana – two other mysteries often associated with Epiphany.
But once Jesus is revealed, we will see this most important battle really take shape as we enter into Lent. The evil one will try with all his might to destroy our Lord – from the moment he tempts Jesus in the desert until our Lord’s death on the cross.
While the readings of the early days of Holy Week seemingly paint the picture of evil gaining the upper hand, we know by faith that all that happens to our Lord in His passion and death are but necessary tactical moves toward the glorious victory of Easter.
Yet while our Lord is indeed victorious over sin and death in the glory of His resurrection, each of us must personally fight against evil. For while our original sin is forgiven, its effects linger within us still, leading us into personal sin.
As long as we live on this earth, we – like our Lord – must be willing to fight for the salvation of souls: our own and others as well. In other words, even though the battle has already been won, we must choose sides in this great cosmic battle between good and evil.
Sacramentally, we make this choice of sides at our baptism. Baptism enlists us, as it were, in the great army of the Church militant, and we make the promise to live for Christ – dying with Him the death of sin so that we might rise with Him in His resurrection.
Through the continued reception of the sacraments, we are strengthened for battle and our wounds are mended and healed. Through the sacraments, especially Holy Communion, we are also given a foretaste of the victory that shall be ours if we only but persevere to the end.
Alas, how many of us have abandoned our Lord’s army? How many of us have been seduced away from a true adherence to our Catholic faith by the mammon of this world?
Carried away by our lusts and passions, how many of us live habitually in a state of mortal sin – all the while pacifying ourselves with the bold-faced lie that we can disobey the Church’s serious moral teachings and still remain in God’s good graces?
My dear children, this must not be. This must not be the case for any of us. We must not let the evil one get the better of us, nor must we allow our loved ones to be poisoned by him and wrapped in his webs of sin and vice.
If we have been baptized, we have been marked for Christ! We belong to Him and His Kingdom – and He belongs to us! In His goodness, Jesus constantly gives Himself and His mercy and forgiveness to us through the sacraments.
We need only be humble enough to accept His grace that enables us to do His will, and strong enough to call upon His mercy whenever we fail. Moreover, we must be courageous enough to share the truth of our Catholic faith with others so they might be saved.
We must be courageous enough to gently correct those who have strayed from the narrow path that alone leads to Heaven.
Today’s feast reminds us of God’s goodness and His desire for all men to be saved. Like the magi of old, may we search Him out with diligence so that salvation may be ours.
Instead of a gift of gold, let us give to Him our undying love that pours itself out in a generous love for our neighbor. Instead of sweet-smelling frankincense, let us devote ourselves to our Lord in prayer.
And instead myrrh, which was used to anoint a body for burial, let us present to our Lord our sufferings endured out of love for Him and in union with Him.
May we be willing to fight the battle against personal sin and evil so that God may be glorified by our very lives.
May Jesus Christ be praised, now and forever. Amen.
9 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
Archive for the ‘05 Homilies by Fr. Reid’ Category
Epiphany
In 05 Homilies by Fr. Reid on 2015/01/09 at 12:00 AMMary Mother of God
In 05 Homilies by Fr. Reid on 2015/01/02 at 12:00 AMWhile most of the world calls this day “New Year’s Day,” today the Church celebrates the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God. And nowadays – some 2000 years after Mary’s life on earth – we don’t even blink at this audacious title.
But if we stop for a moment and think about this title, we might be a bit confused. How can anyone be called the Mother of God?
God is eternal, and is therefore unborn. He existed before time began; He is unbegotten. It is He Who made everything and holds everything in being. So how can God have a mother?
The early Church fathers wrestled with this very question, and in fact they were so reluctant to give her this title that it took them 400 years to do so.
The title “Theotokos” – which means “God-Bearer” – was not accorded to Mary until 431 AD at the Council of Ephesus – a full four centuries after the death of Christ! And this was done only amidst great controversy and division. But it is ultimately from this council that we get today’s feast.
What we must understand about this feast is that it does not stand alone. To fully appreciate it the richness of it, we must understand it in connection with the great solemnity we celebrated just one week ago: Christmas!
In fact, today’s Gospel returns us to the Christmas story. What the Church is telling us with this Gospel is that we can only understand Mary’s virginal motherhood by looking at the Incarnation.
Very simply put, Mary is called “Theotokos”, she is called the “Mother of God” because God the Father chose to send His Son, Jesus, the eternal Word in Whom and through Whom all things were made, into this world.
And why did He do this? St. Paul gives us the answer in today’s second reading. He tells us that God sent His son to ransom those under the law so that we might receive adoption as sons! In other words, He sent His son to save us by making us His very own.
But today’s feast is not only connected to Christmas. To fully appreciate Mary’s role as Mother of God, one must look at all of the great Marian feasts.
For example, for God to bring about the miracle of the Incarnation, He needed a vehicle, someone who would be willing to say “yes” to bearing His Son.
But even before He could ask someone to bear His Son, He needed to preserve her from all stain of sin so that she would be worthy to bear the Christ Child. By a singular grace, God preserved Mary from all stain of original sin – she was immaculately conceived.
And because of this grace, she was asked by God through the Archangel Gabriel to bear the Christ Child – a miracle we recall every March 25 with the Feast of the Annunciation.
And because Mary said “yes” at the Annunciation, the Word was made flesh: Christ was born of Mary: the mystery we call the Incarnation, which we know from St. Paul is really the mystery of God procuring our salvation.
As a result of receiving the singular grace of being immaculately conceived and saying yes to God, Mary receives the august title “Mother of God” – because it is she who bore Jesus, who is the second person of the Blessed Trinity and who is our Lord and Savior. God further honors Mary at the end of her life by assuming her, body and soul, into heaven.
The point is that today’s feast, as well as all of the great Marian feasts, are all part of the mystery of our salvation. Mary is not some passive spectator in salvation history: she is an integral part of it. Without her “yes”, we would be in big trouble! And the Church, in recognizing this, accords her great honor with the title “Mother of God.”
My friends, as we begin this new year, let us remember that while Mary does not of herself bring about our salvation, as Catholics we know that she does play an indispensable part!
Therefore, let us pray earnestly for Our Lady’s intercession in our own lives so that she may help each of us along our own personal roads to salvation. She is God’s Mother, and therefore she is our mother too.
Have a happy and blessed new year!
1 January 2012
©Reverend Timothy Reid
Fr. Reid is the pastor of St. Ann Catholic Church, Charlotte, NC
Christmas Mass
In 05 Homilies by Fr. Reid on 2014/12/25 at 12:00 AM France has long been called the “Eldest Daughter of the Church,” mostly because of the deep way our Christian faith took root in that country in the earliest centuries of our Church history.
The faith came to life in France like in no other country, which can be seen in the fact that so many of our greatest saints and so many of our most beautiful Catholic churches and works of art are to be found within her borders.
Considering the historical greatness of the Catholic faith in France, it really should come as no surprise that the downfall of the Catholic faith in France was so heinous and horrifying.
St. Peter tells us that satan prowls the world like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour, and what greater prey could he have had than a country like France was 250 years ago?
In a Reign of Terror that made our revolution here in America look like a tea party, the French Revolution of the late 18th century sought to strike a blow to the faith in France by a wholesale assault on the Catholic Church.
Indeed, the French Revolution was not only an assault on the Church, but an assault on God Himself. To the revolutionaries nothing was considered sacred.
Indeed, hundreds of priests and nuns were sent to the guillotine, and as if there were not enough, many of the Church’s goods and treasures were confiscated, and countless church buildings and works of art were destroyed.
This is because the revolutionaries knew that to root out the faith and to limit the Church’s influence, they had to destroy not only the living embodiments of our Faith – the priests and religious – but also the images and icons that testify to what we believe.
Like the iconoclasts of old who thought it heretical to have manmade images of our Blessed Lord and the saints, the French revolutionaries sought to destroy the Church’s ability to evangelize humanity by destroying her art and architecture.
Now, over 200 years later, we can see that while the Catholic faith has not been completely extinguished in France, the revolutionaries certainly succeeded in maiming the Catholic faith of the Church’s eldest daughter.
They were successful in part because of their destruction of our art and architecture. You see, my brothers and sisters, our faith is incarnational by its very nature!
Our beautiful works of art are not simply decorations to enhance the aesthetics of a church building. Our architecture is not meant to be simply a method of providing a place for us to worship.
Beautiful art and architecture that is truly sacred makes the invisible, visible. Sacred art and architecture serve to remind us not only of the particular mysteries of our faith, but that God Himself is something that we can perceive with our senses.
And that is precisely what we celebrate every year with this joyful feast of Christmas: that God is not an abstraction or some grand figment of the collective imagination of mankind. God is real!
Knowing that man often tends to be feckless and fickle in the weaknesses of human nature, our blessed Lord knew that He to be something that man could see and touch and hear in order to get man’s attention and save man from his sins.
And so in act of love beyond all telling, an act of infinite self‐giving, our Lord Jesus Christ became man. At the assent of a teenage virgin in the city of Nazareth 2000 years ago, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.
And tonight we see His glory: the glory as of the Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth!
Our blessed Lord became flesh and dwelt among us not simply to prove that He is real, but so that He could deliver us from our sins through His death on the cross. In short, Christ was born for us so that He could die for us.
Thus Christmas is, in this sense, a precursor to Good Friday! We see this from the moment He was born.
So poor was Jesus when He was born that His virgin mother laid Him in a wooden manger – a feeding trough for animals – foreshadowing the supreme moment of His life when our Lord would feel course wood against His back again on Calvary – poor and naked once as the day He was born.
But in His generosity, it was not enough for our Lord to live and die for us. His incarnation was not only a gift to those who lived at the same time as He. Jesus is Emmanuel, God‐with‐us, and He is with us even now!
We hear Him speaking to us through His Word contained within Sacred Scripture.
In His mercy and goodness our Lord becomes present for us again at every Mass in the
miracle of Eucharist. In the Eucharist, which is His body, blood, soul, and divinity, our
Lord remains something that we can see and touch and even taste.
No, my dear brothers and sisters, God is not an abstraction. He is not a fairy tale. God is
as real as you and me, and tonight we celebrate our Lord as a tiny babe born to the
Virgin Mary.
Our world is dark today, and in the darkness of our world today it is often difficult to
see and know God. Indeed, faith is something most of us have to work at.
In the busyness of modernity, it is easy to lose sight of this tiny baby born for us 2000
years ago.
But Christmas confronts us with a decision: the decision of whether or not to believe
this truth and to live our lives like we believe it.
For if we truly believe that Jesus is God, then we need to live in a way that is pleasing to
Him by fulfilling His commands, most especially the command to love Him above all
things and to love our neighbors as ourselves.
And so for the past couple of Sundays I’ve been asking you, who or what is it that you
worship? For worshipping is an inescapable reality for man.
Do you worship this God Who became man for us on this night some 2000 years ago in
the tiny village of Bethlehem?
Trusting in His our Lord’s goodness and generosity, let us recommit ourselves tonight
to worshipping this tiny child who birth we are celebrating. Let us place all our faith and hope in Him, trusting that He is not only real, but that He will save us from our sins.
25 December 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
Rejoicing
In 05 Homilies by Fr. Reid on 2014/12/19 at 12:00 AMYou will note that, instead of the penitential violet that I’ve been wearing for the past two weeks of Advent, today I am wearing rose. As well, the single rose-colored candle on our Advent wreath is lit.
This is because today is Gaudete Sunday. Gaudete is a Latin word that means: “rejoice,” and the color rose symbolizes our rejoicing! In the midst of this season of penance and expectation, today Holy Mother Church calls us to rejoice on this day – for Jesus is near!
Today we use the color rose as a sign of our hope in Christ and the deep and abiding joy that we should have in Him and in His power to save us from our sins.
Throughout the course of Advent, the readings and prayers of Mass help us prepare for our Lord’s coming – both as man in the Incarnation and His second coming, when He will come in glory with all the angels and saints to bring salvation to those who love Him.
Thus, in all of the readings we hear at Mass during Advent there is an undertone of hope. We see this especially today in the first reading from Isaiah in which we are told that our Lord will come with vindication in order to save us.
Isaiah tells us that even nature itself will anticipate the time of the Lord’s coming as the desert and parched land exult, and the steppe rejoices and blooms with abundant flowers.
But more importantly, Isaiah speaks of the miracles that will accompany the coming of the Messiah, namely that “the eyes of the blind [will] be opened, the ears of the deaf be cleared; then will the lame leap like a stag, [and] the tongue of the mute sing.”
And in our Gospel we hear Jesus refer to this prophesy to confirm that He is indeed this long- awaited Messiah as He sends the message to St. John the Baptist: “the blind regain their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have the good news proclaimed to them.”
Just as Jesus fulfilled the Messianic prophesies of Isaiah by His virginal birth and the miracles He worked, it is our firm and confident hope that our Lord will fulfill His promise of salvation when He comes again at the end of time, and that hope leads us to rejoice today.
But the hope we bear today as we await our Lord’s coming is not something that just springs up on its own because we’ve heard these readings.
The mere knowledge of the Savior’s existence and His imminent coming does not engender hope in the hearts of most of us. We must prepare our hard hearts to hope in God by using the spades of fasting, penance, and sacrifice to dig out the stones of sin and indifference.
Truly, how many of us who profess belief in Jesus and in His power to save us remain unmoved in faith or hope by this holy season of Advent or the beauty of Christmas?
Sadly, there are plenty of Christians today who plunge head long into the soul-numbing materialism of this season with very little thought for this season’s true meaning.
Rather than honoring Advent as a season of penance, fasting, and prayer, so many of us treat it as an early celebration of Christmas, feasting and celebrating, and concerning ourselves more with preparing our homes for Christmas rather than preparing our souls for Christ.
This focus on materialism deadens our love for God and makes us indifferent to Him. When we place our hopes on the things of this world or the gifts under our Christmas tree, we quickly begin to believe that we no longer need God. That’s our human nature.
While today and the major feast days of this season are days of feasting and celebration, we must strive nonetheless to maintain some sense of penance and fasting in Advent, some sense of simplicity, because penance and fasting help to engender within our souls the hope that is proper to this season.
Hope, like all virtues, is delicate and fragile as it begins to take root in our souls. Like a
gentle flame that is easily extinguished, hope must be protected from the winds of pessimism,
doubt, and materialism that can lead us to place our trust in something other than God.
In order to stand fast against those things that can extinguish our hope in God, we must
strengthen the virtue of hope within us through the practices of prayer, fasting, and penance.
Whereas prayer helps us to know and love God, fasting and penance help us to find joy inHim. By stripping away other joys in which we might be tempted to take more delight than we do in God, penance and fasting helps us to focus on God as our supreme joy!
Thus, fasting and penance give rise to hope; they prepare our hearts to hope in the Lord. This is precisely why I asked you to do a little fasting this Advent, especially during the first 9 days of this month as we were praying our novena in preparation for the consecration of our parish to the Immaculate Heart of Mary!
While fasting and penance strengthen our prayers and make them even more acceptable to God, fasting and penance also focus our attention more squarely upon Him! And in focusing on our Lord all the more intently, we come to love and desire Him all the more!
It’s also for this reason that we are counseled by St. James to be patient until the coming of the Lord. Waiting patiently is it’s own form of penance.
But there’s also a certain joy we experience when anticipating the arrival of a loved one. We naturally get excited at the thought of a loved one’s coming, especially if we haven’t seen him for a long time or if he’s coming from a long way away.
Thus, Advent should produce a certain anticipatory joy within our souls as we await the coming of Jesus! But this can only happen fully if we await our Lord in a spirit of fasting and penance, rather than indulging in the joys of Christmas early!
In a sense during Advent the Catholic soul is called to be like an engaged couple, who courageously practicing the virtue of chastity before their marriage, enjoys the expectation of nuptial bliss that marriage will bring.
It takes restraint and discipline not to indulge in the rights of marriage when one is engaged, but doing so creates its own joy of anticipation, and it increases the joy of the wedding night.
Refraining from the joy until the proper time makes the joy all the more enjoyable when that proper time comes! The same is true for Advent!
While some amount of feasting during Advent is appropriate – such as on a day like today – and because it’s nearly impossible in our cultural milieu to avoid parties altogether this time of the year, it’s important for us to maintain a spirit of fasting and penance during Advent.
So in the 10 days that remain before the great feast of Christmas, let us all make it a point to take on some special form of fasting or to make some extra sacrifices in order to better prepare for our Lord’s coming. Let us strive for a little simplicity in our lives!
Let us strive to forget the things of this world and focus our attention solely on our Lord. The great Spanish mystic St. John of the Cross once wrote: “Forget the creature; remember the Creator. Study the interior life, and enjoy love’s summation.” May we heed his advice as a means of preparing for our Lord’s coming.
Let us trust that by our fasting and penances, our hearts will grow in hope, and our souls will be even more fitting places in which our Lord may dwell.
O Mary, Mother of Holy Hope and Virgin Most Powerful, pray for us!
15 December 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
Praying Litanies
In 05 Homilies by Fr. Reid on 2014/12/12 at 12:00 AMWithin our beautiful Catholic tradition of prayer we have litanies dedicated both to the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Joseph. A litany, as you most likely know, is a form of prayer that consists of a series of invocations and responses meant to implore God’s grace and mercy or to ask for the intercession of a particular saint.
While there are a handful of saints with their own litanies as well, the Litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary (sometimes called the Litany of Loreto) and the Litany of St. Joseph are well known by Catholics and are often used.
The fact that the Church encourages the usage of these two litanies tells us not only that we should turn to both Mary and Joseph in our times of need, but that they are very willing and capable intercessors as well. That makes perfect sense, does it not?
If our Lord is going to grant the petitions of any of the saints in Heaven, isn’t it fitting that He should answer the prayers and petitions of Mary and Joseph above all others?
Of course it is fitting! Indeed, it is right and just that our Lord should give particular deference to His Immaculate Mother and His earthly father – and not just because they are His parents, but because of their heroic holiness.
We have focused a great deal on our Blessed Lady this Advent, and rightly so, for by having carried our Savior in her womb, Mary embodies the spirit of hopeful expectation for the Lord that is proper to Advent.
In her faith-filled yes to the Archangel Gabriel at the Annunciation, and through her patience as the mystery of our Lord’s Incarnation unfolded within her and around her, Mary – more than anyone else – teaches us how to live Advent and prepare for our Lord’s coming.
As the Litany of Loreto tells us, Mary is both Mother Most Pure and Virgin Most Faithful.
But today, through our Gospel story, Holy Mother Church focuses our attention on goodSt. Joseph, the just one who served as our Lord’s father during His earthly life.
While we often refer to St. Joseph as the foster father of Jesus, in Hebrew society andculture, there was no real distinction between an adoptive father and a biological father.
In Joseph’s time if a child was accepted by a man and taken into his home to be caredfor, that child became the real child of that man. The man’s acceptance of the child was the determining factor.
Adopted sons gained not only a father, but also the father’s ancestry. This is animportant point, for St. Joseph was of the house of David.
Thus, as St. Joseph was His earthly father, we can refer to Jesus as the Son of David,fulfilling the messianic prophecy that a Messiah would be born of David’s line, a prophecy that St. Paul mentions in our second reading today.
We hear a little bit about the messianic prophesies of Isaiah in our first reading today.This story of King Ahaz took place about 700 years before the birth of Christ, and Christian tradition has always interpreted it as a prophecy about Jesus and Mary.
Certainly, it seems quite right that our Lord, who by His Incarnation comes to redeemall mankind from sin, should be born of a sinless woman of virginal integrity.
But our Gospel story makes it clear that Mary could not carry out the task of bringing the Messiah into the world all on her own. She needed a husband, but not to conceive the child. Rather, she needed a husband to protect and guide her and her child.
Considering the circumstances surrounding our Lord’s conception, our Lady needed a husband who was a man of faith, a man of justice, a man who would be wholly obedient to the will of God. And so in his Litany, we pray to Joseph Most Just, Joseph Most Faithful, and Joseph Most Obedient.
Moreover, in his own holiness, St. Joseph recognized the holiness of the Blessed Virgin Mary, even though she was pregnant by means of someone other than himself. We can see St. Joseph’s holiness shine through the way he decided to deal with Mary.
St. Joseph decided to divorce our Lady, not out of anger, but simply because he was faced with an unexplainable situation. No doubt divorcing her seemed only logical to him. So he proceeded to do so, but in a charitable way that would not bring her shame.
Keep in mind that our Lady made no explanation for herself. In her humility and faithfulness, our Lady remained silent and did not defend her honor – even to St. Joseph. Mary simply surrendered herself to God’s providential care.
Because our Lord knew that Mary would act in this very virtuous way, He gave Mary to St. Joseph’s care – who was the man in all of history that our Lord trusted above all else – the man our Lord knew would do right by her and by His Son.
So what we see in our Gospel story today is the beauty of virtue, the beauty of true holiness being lived out in perfect accordance with God’s will – even through the terrible trial of emotions that both Joseph and Mary must have suffered in this situation.
And that’s precisely the point! Our Gospel story today shows us that in seeking God’s will and acting with virtue, our Lord rewards us with understanding and peace, just as he rewarded St. Joseph with these things in his dream, even though he must have had to suffer first.
Trials of faith are the ways our Lord tests us to see just how much we love Him. It’s the way that He strengthens us to be more like His Son.
Ultimately our Gospel story shows us that Christ is worth waiting for!
For the past three weeks, we have been preparing ourselves for Christ’s coming(hopefully) by our prayer, our fasting, and our penances. We’ve invited a little extra suffering and discomfort into our lives as a means of preparing for the Gift to come.
Very soon, my brothers and sisters, our Lord will come to us once again at Christmas.He will come as He always does with His mighty gift of salvation, with a peace that surpass all understanding, and with a love that surpasses all knowledge.
If we have placed all of our hopes in Him this Advent Season, then we will be filled withjoy at His coming, regardless of what may or may not be under our Christmas trees.
Following the example of Blessed Mary, Ever Virgin, the Mother of our Savior and yet the Virgin Most Powerful, as well as that of St. Joseph, the Spouse of the Mother of Godand the Diligent Protector of Christ, may we learn to be steadfast in our faith and hope in the Lord so that we may know His love for all eternity.
21 December 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
St. Catherine of Siena
In 05 Homilies by Fr. Reid on 2014/12/05 at 12:00 AMSt. Catherine provides us with her single- minded devotion to Christ. From the time she was 6 years old and had her first vision of Jesus, St. Catherine was completely devoted to Him – even bearing His wounds with her stigmata.
Despite the very considerable pressure from her family to marry, despite the persecutions she faced from so many others for her work, St. Catherine never consciously deviated from following God’s will to the best of her abilities. She stayed united to Him throughout her life.
St. Catherine knew that there was no middle ground between serving Christ and serving the devil. She understood well the dangers of vice and the slippery slope of sin it engenders. Her writings reveal that she was ever conscious of avoiding giving our Lord the least offense.
Sadly, so many of us today do not take sin seriously. As St. John Vianney once said, “we play with sin.” This is because we simply don’t realize how terrible and how offensive to our Lord even the smallest venial sin is.
And so many of us carelessly commit sins, excusing ourselves because we think they don’t really matter much. But my brothers and sisters, this is so terribly dangerous, for willfully giving in to sin – even venial ones – makes us playthings of the devil.
In the Gospels [cf. Matt 12:30] Jesus tells us that we are either for Him or against Him. When we sin, even in a venial way, we set ourselves against our Lord. But if we wish to be saved, then we must remain with Him by remaining within the safe pastures of His Body, the Church.
For to be a Christian, to be a follower of Christ, we must be united to His one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic Church.
Our readings today follow this same line of thought. In the first reading, St. Peter makes it clear we must choose for Christ, who is the stone rejected by the builders, rather than be like the chief priests and elders of the Jewish people who rejected Him, for there is no other name under Heaven by which we can be saved.
Thus we must entrust ourselves to Him, following Him just as sheep follow the voice of their shepherd. For as our Gospel passage for today attests, our Lord is not simply any shepherd; He is the Good Shepherd! And our salvation – not to mention our peace and our joy in this life – is only found in being one of the sheep of His flock.
We become one of the Lord’s sheep through our baptism. But after baptism we must continue choosing to be a member of His flock by humbling obeying Him and the teachings of His Catholic Church, which is the instrument through which God saves mankind.
Unfortunately, there are many wolves in the world today that would lead us sheep astray from the true and fertile pastures of Holy Mother Church.
Not only are there false religions and ideologies that pervert, distort, or obscure the teachings of God’s one true Church, but there is the ever present problem of rampant materialism that tells us that happiness is only found in the consumption of created things.
But perhaps the worst wolf of all is that selfish form of pride that tempts us to believe we can decide for ourselves what is right and wrong, that we can create our own truth by which to live. Ultimately, this wolf in sheep’s clothing leads us to the belief that we don’t need God at all.
This is a terrible lie.
As the Responsorial Psalm tells us today, it is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trustmen. For as St. Peter reminds us, there is no salvation in anyone other than our Lord.
This is a truth that St. Catherine and all of the saints understood so well. Indeed, all of thesaints attest by the way they lived their earthly lives that to live one’s life for anyone or
anything other than our Lord is an utter absurdity and a ticket to hell.
And so it is that our choice for or against Jesus Christ is the most fundamental choice each ofus has to make in this life, and herein lays the mystery of human freedom.
God created us to love Him, but there is no true love without the freedom to choose. Thus it is that our Lord gave us this capacity to choose. What we must understand is that this capacity tochoose for or against God is nothing less than the capacity to determine our eternal destiny.
Simply put, we choose heaven or hell by how well we conform ourselves to Christ in this life. The mystery of human freedom is that anyone would ever choose hell over heaven. But some do!
Our Catholic faith teaches us that hell exists, and I think it’s irrational to believe that hell existsand that no one is in it!
But let us be clear about one very important point: the choice for heaven or hell is not a one-time event in our life. We make this choice so very gradually by every moral decision we
make – even the small ones.
Indeed, Heaven is won or lost not so much in the big decisions of life, but rather in the littleday-to-day decisions we make. Every act of the will by which we seek to follow our Lord and
His Church is a step toward Heaven.
Conversely every sin, no matter how big or small, every act of defiance against our Lord, andevery act of disobedience to the teachings of the Church He founded, is a step away from our
Lord and heaven, and a step toward hell.
Truly, as a priest there is nothing sadder to me than seeing a Catholic defiantly or even casuallyturning away from the Church and her teachings. This is because we Catholics have the extraordinary grace and privilege of knowing the fullness of God’s truth through the teachings of the Church.Truly, there is no salvation outside the Church. To live as if there is, is to risk your soul.
Of course in making our daily decisions to sin or not sin, we must fight our passions, ourprejudices, and our pride. We must fight against the spirit of this world, which constantly encourages us to rebel against the ways of God in order to devote ourselves more fully to the false consolations of mammon. At times we must even fight the devil himself.
But our good Lord does not leave us alone in this fight! He is our good shepherd, and He lays down His life for His sheep. Not only has He given us the teachings of the Church to guide us as make decisions, but He also gives us the grace of the sacraments, which strengthen us and conform us ever more closely to Him.
And when we fail, He gives us His mercy through the Sacrament of Reconciliation – no matter how serious our sins may be. Truly, if you make it a habit to go to confession regularly, you will be saved! But if you don’t use this sacrament, your chances for salvation are iffy.
While our Lord desires us to be perfect, living a perfect life here on earth is not a requirement for salvation. But loving our Lord by being humble obedient is. Being contrite for our sins and confessing our sins is.
Just as the chief priests and elders of the Jewish people rejected him 2000 years ago, our Lord continues to be rejected by our world today. But as Catholics we know that despite the rejection of the world, Jesus is Good Shepherd who alone can lead us to eternal life.
And being one of His sheep is a choice we make every day, most especially in the little decisions to either sin or not sin, to follow His will or turn away from it.
So, brothers and sisters, let us choose to be one of the Lord’s sheep by always choosing to be faithful children of Holy Mother Church. Let us strive to avoid even the smallest of sins so that we may always be pleasing to Him in every way.
May St. Catherine of Siena, Doctor of the Church, always intercede for us.
29 April 2012
Christ the King
In 05 Homilies by Fr. Reid on 2014/11/28 at 12:00 AMAs we come to the end of the year, Holy Mother Church turns our minds to what are traditionally called the 4 Last Things: death, judgment, Heaven, and hell.
In particular today we are called to meditate on Jesus Christ as the Sovereign King of the Universe, the Almighty One, Whom some day we all must face as our judge.
As we consider this moment of supreme importance, it’s obviously so very important that we are well prepared for this meeting.
The fearful part of facing Christ our King is that we are all sinners. This is one of the saddest realities of humanity. All of us are marked not only by the original sin of Adam and Eve, but we have also committed countless personal sins.
While, no doubt, we have also pleased our Lord with our good and virtuous acts, most of us have committed at least some sins that merit hell.
But while the fact that we are sinners is indeed a sad reality, it is not the most fundamental human reality.
The most fundamental human reality is that we are created in God’s image and likeness, and that despite our sinfulness, God still loves us and wants to save us!
So while Jesus is a just judge, He is also our merciful Savior. And if we are truly sorry for our sins and seek forgiveness in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, then His mercy is ours!
But there is one little caveat to our Lord’s mercy: If we wish to enjoy God’s mercy, then we must be merciful in turn. If we wish to be forgiven, then we must forgive. The Gospels bear this out for us.
In the 6th chapter of Matthew, just after He has taught His disciples the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus says to them: “If you forgive others their transgressions, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your transgressions.”
In the 18th chapter of Matthew Jesus tells the parable of the unmerciful servant who, even though he had been forgiven his debts to his master, refused to forgive debts owed to him. Again in this passage Jesus makes it clear that our failure to forgive nullifies our Lord’s forgiveness for us.
One thing that I think is important to note about these biblical passages is that none of them puts qualifications on forgiveness. Jesus doesn’t make any exceptions to the rule of forgiving others.
He doesn’t say that if a wrong is really great, we don’t have to forgive. In fact, when St. Peter asks Jesus: “Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive him? As many as 7 times?” Jesus replies: “I say to you, not 7 times, but 77 times!”
And so what we can deduce from this is that there should be no limit to our forgiveness, no matter how egregious the sin committed against us.
I bring this up today because this week with Thanksgiving we are entering into the holiday season. Between now and the new year, most of us will be having special gatherings with our families and friends – some of whom we do not see any other time of the year. This can be good or bad!
As a priest who sits in a confessional a couple times a week, I know that the holiday season – as wonderful as it is – is often a time for an increase in sins against charity!
It is an interesting reality that the ones who love us the most are the ones who hurt us the most, and vice versa. It’s very easy for the hurts and wounds that we cause each other to fester into full-blown grudges that we hold onto and nurse over the years.
From my point of view as a priest, I think there is nothing sadder that meeting a person who’s held onto a grudge for years on end and has refused to forgive and be reconciled with a loved one who has hurt him.
At the same time I also know that forgiveness can be difficult. When someone hurts us, especially if the wound is deep, then we have to contend a whole host of negative emotions that can cloud and confuse rational judgment.
Moreover, one’s sense of justice – often propped up by the vices of pride and anger – can harden one’s heart and deaden one’s conscience so that we believe that we are justified in holding onto our grudge and refusing to forgive.
Yet while we may satisfy the demands of our pride and anger, no one who refuses to forgive will ever be completely happy or at peace. That lack of forgiveness chains us to the vices of pride and anger and makes us less able to love – and less loveable.
Sadly, we all know that others can hurt us in unbelievably cruel ways, and when the damage that is done is serious, it cannot be ignored. So how do we move beyond our own pain to extend true forgiveness in those really difficult and painful situations?
For us to be able to forgive, we must be able to move beyond our negative emotions and to make the act of the will to love that person – even in their unloveliness. This requires virtue, specifically the virtues of courage, meekness, charity, and magnanimity.
Thus all forgiveness must begin with humility, which is the root of all virtue. When we are tempted to refuse forgiveness, it’s often helpful to take a step back and humbly call to mind all the ways we’ve hurt others.
In our humility we should cultivate the willingness to bear wrongs patiently, accepting the pain that others cause in our lives as a means of making reparation for our own sins.
Another helpful step is to pray earnestly for the person who has hurt us – for their healing and conversion – and to offer sacrifices and do penances for their sins. It’s difficult to hold a grudge for long against someone for whom you are doing penance!
Truly, if you really want to move beyond your hurts and extend forgiveness to someone who’s hurt you, you must be willing to bear and embrace the pain they’ve caused as a means of making reparation for their sins as well as your own.
This means that you must be willing to love the person who hurt you more than you love your pride. It means that you must desire his salvation more than you desire justice for the wrong committed against you.
Brothers and sisters, all of us cause wounds in others, and all of us must endure wounds from others. Sometimes these wounds can be quite painful and seemingly unable to be healed. But with Christ, all things are possible.
In order to prepare ourselves for that supreme moment when we will have to face Him as our Judge, let us ask ourselves if there’s anyone whom we have yet to forgive. Are there any grudges we’re holding onto?
If so, make the act of will here and now to let go of it. Don’t try to ignore the pain the person has caused you. Accept the pain and offer it up in reparation for their sins and yours, and as a prayer that our Lord might heal all that needs healing within them.
• In doing so we will free ourselves from a great deal of pain and misery, and we will become more like our merciful King in whose image and likeness we have been created.
24 November 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
St. Thomas Aquinas
In 05 Homilies by Fr. Reid on 2014/11/14 at 12:00 AM• Amongst the religious art in the Louvre Museum in Paris is a beautiful painting of the angelic doctor of the Church, St. Thomas Aquinas. The masterpiece, which was painted by Benozzo Gozzoli in 1471, is entitled: “The Triumph of St. Thomas Aquinas,” and it shows St. Thomas seated with Aristotle and Plato to his right and left. At the saint’s feet is the defeated Muslim philosopher Averoës, who led many Christians into heresy with his interpretations of Aristotle.
• Above St. Thomas is our Lord, surrounded by St. Paul, Moses, and the four Evangelists, with the inscription: “Bene scipsisti deme Thomma”: “You have written well of me, Thomas.”
• I mention this painting because of St. Thomas’ connection with our second reading today.
• In our second reading today we hear St. Paul’s famous treatise on the importance of love in his 1st Letter to the Corinthians. This is one of the most beautiful passages in the Bible, and it’s a reading that is often used very fittingly at weddings.
• In this passage St. Paul tells us of the absolute necessity of living a life of love. In fact, St.Paul makes the point that it doesn’t matter how many talents or other virtues we have; if we fail to love, then nothing else matters.
• “If I speak in human and angelic tongues, but do not have love, I am a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal. And if I have the gift of prophesy, and comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge; if I have all faith so as to move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.”
• “If I give away everything I own, and if I hand my body over so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.”
• St. Paul then goes on to tell us the characteristics of true love or charity, namely that it is patient, kind, not jealous or pompous, not inflated or rude, and does not seek its own interests. True love is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury.
• On the contrary, St. Paul tells us that Christian charity bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things. It never fails.
• St. Thomas Aquinas wrote extensively and well about the virtue of charity. And he teaches us that as we go about living our lives, we must always seek to grow in this most important virtue of charity, for growth in this virtue helps to perfect all the other virtues within us.
• St. Thomas referred to charity as the “form” of the virtues, meaning that as we grow in charity, all of the other virtues are perfected within us.
• But perhaps the most important element of Christian love or charity that we must not overlook, and that St. Paul states in this second reading, is that true love does not rejoice over wrong-doing but rather rejoices with the truth.
• And this is something with which St. Thomas Aquinas whole-heartedly agreed: love and truth can never be separated but must necessarily go hand-in-hand.
• In fact, in Gozzoli’s painting of St. Thomas there is a sunburst over the saint’s heart, a Christian symbol of wisdom that highlights this most important connection between love and truth.
• Moreover, this absolutely essential connection between charity and truth is something that our Holy Father wrote about in his third encyclical: Caritas in Veritate.
• Pope Benedict explains in this encyclical that charity, grounded in truth, is “the principal driving force behind the authentic development of every person and of all humanity.”
• The Holy Father goes on to say that: “A Christianity of charity without truth would be more or less interchangeable with a pool of good sentiments, helpful for social cohesion, but of little relevance” (§ 1-4).
• The point here is that while we all probably understand the necessity of and see the goodness in living a life of love, we must remember that love is not truly love if it is not grounded in or does not reflect truth. For love to be love, it must conform to the objective reality of truth.
• As Catholics we know that truth is not some abstract idea that we can shape and bend to our own desires and wants. Truth is not something that we create of our own. Truth is not a subjective reality capable of changing from one person to the next.
• As Catholics we know that truth is that which conforms to reality. And Truth is a Person: Jesus Christ.
• Therefore when we say that love and truth must necessarily go hand-in-hand, we are saying that our love for others, if it be true, must needs be grounded in Jesus Christ and His teachings, which have been revealed to us through the one, holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church!
• Thus, any action that does not conform to the teachings of Church cannot be properly called love or charity. So for example, an unmarried couple who wishes to show their love for one another through the conjugal act is not acting with true love or charity at all.
• While they may indeed have “loving” feelings for one another, engaging in a conjugal act can never be an act of love for an unmarried couple because it is gravely sinful. Instead, the unmarried couple shows true love and charity for one another by chastely restraining from such actions until they are married.
• As another example, a parent who chooses out of a loving sentiment not to discipline or correct his child when the child misbehaves is not really loving the child at all, for a child will not learn to behave well unless he is corrected for misbehaving.
• Sometimes true love requires doing or saying the hard thing. We see evidenced by our Lord in today’s Gospel when He rebukes the people of Nazareth for their lack of faith.
• The point is that true love, true Christian charity is not a sentimental feeling but an act of the reason and the will that reflects a conformity to truth. Thus, it often requires sacrifice, courage, and a willingness to suffer for the sake of the one who is loved.
• As St. Paul says: true Christian love “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” It never fails. Hear this.
• In writing a treatise on the Gospel of St. John, St. Augustine famously penned the short precept: “Love, and do what you will.”
• In writing this St. Augustine’s was stating that every action of our lives, no matter how large or small, should be grounded in the virtue of charity. Everything that we do should spring from love.
• And this is because if all that we say and do is rooted in true charity, then nothing but good can come from it. True charity always leads us in the right path. It always leads us according to God’s most holy will.
• In essence, if we live a life of love, if all our thoughts, words, and actions are imbued with true charity, then we will have nothing to fear in the afterlife for we will be people of surpassing virtue and holiness.
• My dear friends in Christ, our Lord has graciously given all of us the gifts of faith, hope, and love at our baptisms. But as St. Paul tells us today, the greatest of these is love.
• Let us seek to make true Christian charity, which is grounded in truth, the guiding principle of our lives. And let us trust that in so doing, we will reflect well the love of our Lord, Jesus Christ, Who is the way, the truth, and the life.
Copyright 2010 by Reverend Timothy S. Reid
Reverend Reid is pastor of St. Ann’s Catholic Church in Charlotte, NC
Suffering
In 05 Homilies by Fr. Reid on 2014/11/07 at 12:00 AMFor the past four Sundays, our epistle has come from the Letter to the Hebrews. These readings have been focusing on Jesus as our great high priest and the sacrifice He made on our behalf.
We’ve read about how Jesus was perfected through His suffering endured on our behalf, and of how He sympathizes with our weaknesses having Himself been similarly tested, yet without falling into sin.
We’ve heard of how Jesus is able to deal patiently with us, of how we should confidently approach Him in times of need, and of how His priesthood will last forever.
Today we are reminded by the Letter to the Hebrews of how Jesus is the perfect high priest Who is always able to save those who approach God through Him.
What we learn from all this is that Jesus lives to save us from sin and death. As our great high priest, He is constantly interceding with the Father on our behalf.
Truly, my brothers and sisters, we see in the priesthood of Jesus Christ the clear and perfect love that our Trinitarian Lord has for all humanity. For in the priesthood of Jesus we see that God wants more than anything else to save us from eternal death!
His desire for our salvation, shown in His Mercy, is the greatest sign of God’s love for us.
In our weakness and lack of faith, we frail humans are prone to questioning the love of God when suffering arises in our lives. When bad things happen we often wonder how an all-good and all-loving God could allow such a thing to happen.
This is especially true when suffering arises that has no direct human agent to blame, such as in the case of natural disasters. Perhaps many of the people who have been so harshly affected by Hurricane Sandy are asking that very question right now.
It’s really quite a normal response for people to wonder if things like natural disasters or other widespread forms of suffering are actually punishments from our Lord. But we cannot know if that’s the case or not.
Regardless of how our sufferings come to us, as Christians we should strive to look upon our sufferings as a means of making reparation for our sins and for turning more closely to our Lord, for there is great holiness to be found in doing this.
While it is easy for our emotions to get the better of us in times of crisis, as people of faith we should strive never to question the love the Lord has for us.
For our Lord’s suffering and death on the cross for our sakes is a definitive proof that He does love us. For who would willingly undergo such terrible suffering for the sake of others and at the hands of others if not for love?
In examining the fact that our Lord became man, and suffered and died for us and because of us, the only logical conclusion is that He does love us – and loves us in a way that no human can ever fully match. He loves us in an infinitely perfect way, even if we don’t always understand it!
And so when we suffer in this life – and we all do – the proper response of faith is not to question and turn away from our Lord.
Like the long-suffering Job, we must be willing to accept both good and bad from God’s hands – trusting that both the good we enjoy and the suffering we endure in this life are means for God to help us grow in holiness and prepare for Heaven!
Like Job and all the saints who have gone before us, our response to the Lord in every circumstance of life must be one of love and gratitude.
And this is where we must turn to both our first reading and our Gospel today. Both Moses and Jesus call us to love the Lord with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind, and all our strength; and to love our neighbor as ourselves.
Jesus tells us that these are the greatest commandments. In other words, this is God’s greatest expectation of us. Love is what our Lord desires the most from us!
No doubt all of you who are parents can relate to this. You want your children to love you, do you not? You want your children’s love because you love them so very much.
Everyone who loves wants to be loved in return. This is as true for God as it is for man. And so ultimately, this is what our readings are about today. From Hebrews we learn of God’s love for us, while our first reading and Gospel exhort us to love Him in return.
St. Bede the Venerable has a famous saying: “He alone loves the Creator perfectly who manifests a pure love for his neighbor.” In this quote St. Bede marvelously ties together the two great commandments we hear from our Lord in today’s Gospel.
So while there are many ways to love God, such as obedience to His commands, fidelity to prayer, generously giving to the Church, and so forth, the most perfect way to show God love is to love others as we love ourselves.
We see a marvelous example of this in the life of St. Martin de Porres, whose feast day the Church celebrates this weekend. Martin was the illegitimate mulatto son of a Spanish nobleman, who became a Dominican brother in Lima, Peru, in the 17th century.
Though he was considered an outcast in society, and even though he was sometimes harshly treated by his fellow religious, St. Martin was a master of charity, constantly practicing works of mercy for all in need.
Martin was known for always considering the needs of others as more important than his own needs, often depriving himself of food and sleep so that he could help others.
But Martin’s greatest work of charity was to help others get to Heaven. Many people of all walks of life were converted by his disarming and straightforward love.
So St. Martin shows us that our love for others is most perfectly manifested when we act in ways that help them to get to Heaven, just as God’s love for us is most clearly seen in the fact that He desires to save us!
And so as we consider our relationships with one another, we must learn to think in terms of salvation. Do we always act in ways that help others grow in holiness?
Do we encourage them in the ways of faith? Do we encourage them to keep the commandments? Are we willing to correct others charitably out of love for their soul, even if it is uncomfortable for us to do so?
Or do we sometimes do things that hinder another person’s salvation? Do we speak, act, or dress in provocative ways? Do we encourage others to sin or to dwell upon sinful things? Do we stir people to anger, pride, lust, greed, envy, gluttony, or sloth?
This past week we celebrated the twin feasts of All Saints Day and All Souls Days, which called us to honor the saints and to pray for the poor souls in Purgatory. But ultimately, these feast days point us toward eternity, and thus call us to prepare for our own death.
One great way to prepare ourselves for eternity is by loving others enough to help them along the path to salvation. The beautiful thing about loving others in this way is that by doing so, we also manifest our love for God.
May we all learn to love each other better by truly working for one another’s salvation, and may we thereby prove our love for God, Who desires nothing else than to save us from sin and death.
St. Martin de Porres, pray for us.
04 November 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
All Saints Day
In 05 Homilies by Fr. Reid on 2014/10/31 at 12:00 AMIn the quaint little city of Ghent, Belgium, about 40 minutes outside of Brussels, is one of the world’s true artistic treasures – a masterpiece, really – known as the Altarpiece of Ghent. It is also sometimes referred to as the Adoration of the Mystical Lamb.
Composed of 12 different panels that are all hinged together, the primary panel in the center depicts the scene of Heaven that we hear about in our first reading from St. John’s Book of Revelation.
The scene is one of a verdant pasture, while in the background can be seen the spires of Jerusalem, reminding us that this is Heaven, the New Jerusalem.
In the center is the Lamb, standing upon an altar and surrounded by angels and a “great multitude from every nation, race, people, and tongue wearing white robes and holding palm branches in their hands.”
These saints, who have “washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb,” stream toward our Lord from every corner to give Him glory and honor.
The Lamb, of course, is Christ, and angels holding symbols of His Passion surround him. Blood gushes from His wounded breast into a golden chalice. Yet there is no pain on the Lamb’s face, but rather an expression of triumph.
Indeed, the instruments of His Passion and His bloody wound are the signs of His triumph over sin and death, and because of His wound, we can all be healed.
Hovering above the Lamb of God is the Holy Spirit, depicted as a dove. Emanating from both the Holy Spirit and the Lamb are rays of celestial light that illuminate the entire scene. For there is no sun or moon to illuminate Heaven; only the glory of God!
Truly, it’s a remarkable piece of art – one that I like so much that our mural that we are in the process of creating for our apse wall will be modeled after it.
Included in our mural will be saints from across our Catholic history, as well as important Biblical figures from both the Old and New Testaments. My hope is that it will be the most significant piece of religious art in diocese.
My hope is that our mural will be one great way that we can give glory and honor to our Lord, as He so richly deserves.
As I mentioned on Sunday, I’ve spoken a lot about sin in the past several months, and for many reasons. Sin is the great enemy. What we must remember is that sin and God are mutually exclusive. They cannot and will not exist together. There is no sin in Heaven.
So in addition to being in a state of grace at the moment of death, to be admitted into the glory of Heaven, we must also be purified of our sins – either in this life or in Purgatory. We must be pure and holy!
But holiness does not come easy, does it? Try as we might, we all fail to live up to our calling as Christians. Thus, we need help if we are to be holy. That’s where the saints come in!
As those of you who come to daily Mass know, even though I preach a good bit on sin, I preach more about the saints than anything else.
Moreover, in building and decorating this church, we’ve gone to great lengths to incorporate many, many images of the saints: in our stained glass, in our statues, and eventually in the mural that we’re creating for the apse wall.
This is because I want you never to forget how important the saints are to us!
While we should, of course, fix our eyes firmly on Jesus and make Him the focus of our worship, it’s important for us to have the example of the saints ever before us.
The saints remind us that holiness is truly possible in this life, no matter what our circumstances may be.
So many of the saints were faced with incredible challenges and problems, and yet they persevered through them – and they show us how to do the same thing!
The saints show us how us to suffer well so that we grow in holiness through our sufferings. They even show us how to find joy and peace in the midst of suffering.
In their writings and by their very lives, the saints teach us the truth and beauty of our Catholic faith. They also pray and intercede for us from Heaven!
And most importantly, the saints show us how to love God as He should be loved. And it is in loving God as He should be loved, more than in anything else, that we are purified and made holy. It’s through loving God that we become like Him.
As we celebrate this great Solemnity of All Saints, as we bask in the glory of this great cloud of witnesses who have gone before us marked with the sign of faith, let us trust in their intercession to help us in whatever struggles life brings to us.
Let us look to their example of heroic virtue and purity of life and seek to imitate it for the glory of God and the sake of our souls.
Like the saints in Heaven, let us live out the Beatitudes with faithfulness and integrity so that we may one day join them around the altar of the Lamb.
All you saints in Heaven, pray for us!
1 November 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
Truth to Ponder 