 This morning we celebrate the great gift of our salvation. It is a day of hope and rejoicing, a day best summed up with the one word: Alleluia!

 And as we recall the great and marvelous events of salvation history that prefigured and led to our Lord’s death and resurrection, we recall that the price of our salvation was not something of fleeting value like gold or silver, but the costly shedding of the blood of Christ, the lamb without blemish.
 For our sake Christ was obedient, accepting even death, death on a cross, and the blood of Christ shed upon that awful cross washes away all our sins.
 And so our celebrations today must not be vapid or mundane. While we are called to be joyful, our joy must be not be capricious or worldly, but rather a joy imbued with a mature knowledge of not only what Jesus has done for us, but Who Jesus Is!
 For if any of us dare hope to make good use of the marvelous gift of salvation held out to us today by our Lord’s resurrection from the dead, then we must know Christ and love Him, and not simply know about Him.
 We are now living in a very chaotic time in our country. The culture wars that began in earnest in the 1960s (but whose roots are much, much deeper) are increasing in intensity such that even amongst Christians there are serious disagreements on moral issues on which, just a few decades ago, there was nearly complete unanimity.
 The moral chaos and divisions of our times are leading people to ask deeper questions about the meaning of man and his place in the universe.
 But I submit to you, my brothers and sisters, that we can never fully understand who we are and what our place in the universe is unless we know God, for it is through knowledge of Him that we come to understand ourselves.
 Thus, the fundamental division between peoples in this world is not between liberals and conservatives, or between Republicans and Democrats. It’s not even between Catholics and non‐Catholics, or between Christians and non‐Christians.
 The fundamental division is between people who truly know God and therefore love Him, and those who truly do not know God and therefore do not love Him – for a man of good will cannot truly know God and not love Him.
 We come to know our Lord through prayer and through the sacraments. But we also come to know Him through obedience to His teachings. In being obedient to our Lord’s commands, we are conformed to Him.
 Likewise, when we are disobedient to our Lord’s commands – whether willfully or through ignorance – habits of vice are formed within us that rob us of our knowledge of Him and hinder our efforts to truly love Him.
 On this glorious feast of Easter, we celebrate the resurrection of our Lord from the dead.
 This is the most important feast day of the year because the death and resurrection ofJesus Christ prove definitively that Jesus is whom He says He is: the only begotten Son
of God. For who else but God alone has the power to rise from the dead?

 We must remember that these events of Jesus’ life that we have been commemoratingthis past week are factual events. We know them to be historical and not just the pious beliefs of Christians because they were attested to by many secular eyewitnesses, not just Christians.
 And so as we consider the holy week events, the only logical and rational conclusion we can make is that Jesus is Lord! And if Jesus is truly Lord, shouldn’t we trust Him and be obedient to Him?
 In the Gospel of John, Jesus equates loving God with being obedient to Him. He says: Whoever observes my commandments is the one who loves me….Whoever loves me will keep my word (cf. John 14: 21&23).
 Moreover, as the Way, the Truth, and the Life, Jesus alone has the answers to the deeper questions we are asking in this chaotic time. And He speaks to us through the Church He Himself founded: the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church!
 Brothers and sisters, on this Easter Sunday we remember once again that Jesus truly is God. And in seeing the love Jesus pours out for us through His death and resurrection, we are invited to love Him and obey Him in return.
 Let us pray today for the grace to come to know Jesus better so that we may love Him better. And let us pray, as well, for the grace to prove our love for our Lord by always being obedient to Him. A blessed Easter to you all!
08 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

Of all the Masses that the Catholic Church celebrates in the course of a year, none is more important than the Mass we are celebrating at this moment.
Indeed, “by most ancient tradition, this is the night of keeping vigil for the Lord, in which, following the Gospel admonition, [we], carrying lighted lamps in our hands, should be like those looking for the Lord when He returns, so that at His coming He may find [us] awake” (Roman Missal).
“Tonight Holy Church meditates on the wonders the Lord God has done for His people from the beginning, trusting in His word and promise until, as day approaches, with new members reborn in Baptism, the Church is called to the table the Lord has prepared for His people” (Roman Missal).
Because this is the most solemn of all Masses, it has many additional elements we don’t typically see on Sundays. But all that we do speaks of the incredible mystery of our salvation in Christ Jesus!
The author of the Letter to the Hebrews tells us that God is a consuming fire! (Hebrews 12:29). And so, gathering around a blazing fire, we lit the paschal candle, a symbol of Christ adorned with grains of incense representing His five glorious wounds, and we processed in the darkness, proclaiming Christ as our light and giving thanks for Him!
As the Israelites of old followed the pillar of fire out of the darkness of Egypt and through the waters of the Red Sea to freedom, so too did we, the new Israelites, follow the pillar of fire tonight – symbolizing our walking out of the darkness of sin into the warm embrace of Holy Mother Church.
Once inside the church we listened to the Exultet, the Church’s great song of praise celebrating Christ’s resurrection. And then we listened as the magnificent story of salvation history was recounted to us through the pages of Sacred Scripture.
But the great story of our salvation is not simply something we are simply listening to tonight. No, my brothers and sisters, for those of you entering into the Church this night, you will actually participate in salvation history through the Sacraments!
We see this most clearly in those of you being baptized, wherein we will use water, which is a rich symbol of the grace our Lord gives us the Sacrament of Baptism.
In the great events of Salvation history: Noah and the flood, the crossing of the RedSea by the Israelites, and the crossing of God’s people through the Jordan River into
the Promised Land, we see how our Lord prefigured the Sacrament of Baptism.

The waters of the great flood in Noah’s day were a sign of the waters of Baptism, thatmake an end of sin and a new beginning of goodness. (cf. CCC, #1219)
In the days of Moses, “our Lord freed the children of Abraham from the slavery ofPharaoh, bringing them dry-shod through the waters of the Red Sea, to be an image of
the people set free in Baptism” (CCC, #1221).

“Finally, Baptism is prefigured in the crossing of the Jordan River by which thePeople of God received the gift of the land promised to Abraham’s descendants, an
image of eternal life” (CCC, #1222).

Through this first of sacraments, we die with Christ so that we might rise with Him tonewness of life! By passing through the waters of baptism, just as the Israelites passed through the Red Sea, we enter into a new and eternal covenant with our Lord.
As Pharaoh and his evil forces were drowned in the waters of the Red Sea, so too are all our sins washed away in the waters of Baptism.
Once baptized, our initiation into the Church is continued through the Sacrament of Confirmation, the sacrament that strengthens us in our Christian witness so that we may live our Catholic faith with integrity and courage.
It is our confirmation that enables us to be good soldiers in the army of the Church Militant, willing to fight against evil for our salvation and that of others.
Lastly, as the Israelites were fed by our Lord during their years in the desert with manna, we, too, receive the living bread that comes down from Heaven: the Eucharist, which nourishes and sustains us on our lifelong journey and completes our full incorporation into the Body of Christ and brings us fully into the Promised Land of Holy Mother Church!
Indeed, tonight is no ordinary night. Tonight is the night of our salvation, which comes to us through the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.
Through the grace given to us in the Sacraments, may we all die to sin so that we might live in union with Jesus. May we practice our beautiful Catholic faith with integrity and humility.
And by carrying the lighted lamps of faith, hope, and charity in our hands, may we all be found perfectly ready when the Master returns.

© 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

07 April 2012

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