What really matters to God by Fr Russ Harbaugh

"The greatest sorrow of Mary - Our Lady of Sorrows" by Fr Joseph Hastings

       The cross is our path to heaven and today Mary shows us how to carry the cross. This feast reminds us of the seven sorrows that Mary lived through in relation to her son; those moments of anxiety like when Jesus was lost in the temple, & her greatest sorrow witnessing the death of her son. I suppose God gave her opportunities to back out. He gave her a choice at the Annunciation, and reminded her through Simeon of the sorrow that would come with being the mother of Jesus.

But Mary embraced these sufferings without complaint. She united them to her sons so that they could benefit all of us. The greatest sorrow for Mary today is the sorrow of a mother seeing her children, mankind, rejecting Jesus; choosing sin over love. As a good mother she doesn’t want to see us living in sin, but wants us to experience the joy & happiness that comes from knowing and serving God. We can ease the sorrow of Mary’s heart if like her we accept our sufferings without complaint and unite them to our Lords. In this way we can work with her to lead all her children and our brothers and sisters back to God. 

Solemnity of the Assumption

Sundays, “Dies Domini,” the “Day of the Lord,” are the center of the liturgical calendar, the foundation of the liturgical year. Thus, the Solemnity of the Assumption is a Hoy Day, but since it falls on a Monday this year, the obligation to attend mass is waived in order to not take away from the Sunday Liturgy. Still, it is a very important day for the Church and for the USA. Since I am from Baltimore, MD, it is very important to me. (A little church history.)

Baltimore was the first diocese and first archdiocese in the English-speaking new world. John Carroll was the first bishop/archbishop. He was related to the signer of the Declaration of Independence who was the only Catholic to sign this document, and also was the richest man in the colonies at that time. The first Cardinal was John Gibbons, the Archbishop of Baltimore. Thus, it is significant that the first cathedral in the English-speaking Americas was called the Basilica of the Assumption and thus in a real way, the Mother Church of Catholicism in the USA. It is in downtown Baltimore and I attended mass there often. It was designed by Latrobe, the man who designed Washington DC. This is where the first church councils were held and where the Baltimore Catechism was written. (Enough of a history lesson.) Now about the Solemnity itself.

In November of 1950, Pope Pius XII defined the Assumption of Mary to be a dogma of faith: “We pronounce, declare, and define it to be divinely revealed dogma that the Immaculate Mother of God, the ever-Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul to heavenly glory.” While it may have been the mid-20thcentury that this dogma was “officially” proclaimed, its origins go back centuries. We know that the Feast was celebrated in the 5th century in Palestine; there were copies of homilies about it from the 6th century; the August 15thdate was fixed in the 6th century; it was fixed on the liturgical calendar in Rome in the 7th century and the universal calendar by the 8th century. It was celebrated under various names by the Greek orthodox Church from early times. So, you see the faithful believed in the truth of this Solemnity long before the dogma was proclaimed. (Remember the name of the basilica back in Baltimore!)

The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains a concept called: “sensus fidei,” “the sense of faith.” The idea is that the “whole body of the faithful… cannot err in matters of belief.” All faithful share in understanding and handing on revealed truth. (That means you and me not just the bishops.) We share in Christ’s prophetic function in the Church by virtue of our baptism. Jesus did not leave us orphans but left the Holy Spirit to guide His Church. In relation to the Assumption, the faithful believed it and applied it to everyday life long before Pius XII proclaimed it!

There is an expression the Church has: “Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi,” that is, the “law of praying is the law of believing. “In other words, we pray as we believe. Our great Eucharistic Prayers and Presidential Prayers (Collects) at mass are full of what we believe. I urge you to listen to them closely. Often, they express what the faithful believed long before any dogma was officially declared, as in today’s Mystery.

The lag between the liturgical observance and the dogmatic declaration merely shows that the liturgy doesn’t celebrate dogmas, as such. But, the best way to understand the liturgical celebration of any feast is to look primarily at its prayers and readings, and not to impose on the language of worship the subtleties of dogmatic declaration. We just remembered St. John Vianney, the patron saint of diocesan priests. If you read the Collects for his Memorial, they will tell you why we should use him as an example of leading a good Christian life. Or, for example, today’s Feast not only celebrates Mary, but also the lot of all Christians who share her faith in the Lord and who, one day, share with her the joy of heaven. In the Collects we hear how we can share her glory and reach our goal of eternal life in heaven. It is a sign that our true home is with God. It is a Feast of Hope for all of us! We want to be where Mary is.

I spent over 50 years in the pews as a lay person (I am a third career priest). I always found it hard to pick up the content of the Collects. Do you know the Opening Collect of the Mass for the Assumption? “Almighty ever-living God, who assumed the Immaculate Virgin, the Mother of Your Son, body and soul into heavenly glory, grant, we pray, that always attentive to the things that are above, we may be sharers in her glory. Through… ever and ever. Amen.” What does that mean? Well, that Mary was given a special gift by her Divine Son and if we are attentive to doing the right things, we can one day be like her. The Nicene Creed ends with “the Resurrection of the body and life everlasting, Amen.” The Prayer Over the Gifts reminds us that Mary was assumed into heaven and didn’t ascend; it was an act of God and a special blessing for her and should make us long for being with God like her. Then, the Prayer after Communion asks that “we may be brought into the glory of the Resurrection.” The Preface says that Mary is the image of the Church “coming to perfection.” We should yearn for the same, and gain “hope and comfort” from what Jesus did for her.

Additionally, the Assumption is the sign of God’s mercy being fulfilled. Mercy, in the gospels, is shown not only by the forgiveness of sins but also the fulfillment of promises. The Solemnity celebrates the “great things” that God has done for Mary like lifting up His lowly servant, Mary. God is faithful to His promises. He is faithful to His promises to us, as well. Thus, the Assumption celebrates the mercy of God. Mary’s Assumption foreshadows the destiny of all “those who belong to Christ.” Salvation is the concrete realization of Divine Mercy.

In our news-dominated culture, we tend to view events historically. In this approach, the Assumption celebrates what happened to Mary in the past. Yet, liturgy does more than recall a past event; it draws us into the divine mystery where the event is present here and now. This is the Good News contained in this Solemnity. First, Mary was taken body and soul into heaven. Second, Mary’s Assumption reminds us that we too will someday join Mary in heaven. (Think Nicene Creed) Third, Mary is not only the mother of Jesus, but also our spiritual mother. She prays for us daily that we persevere in our struggle to win, as she did, the reward of eternal life. This is the Good News that we celebrate in the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. 

This is what we pray; this is what we believe.

      A man was driving around a very busy parking lot during Christmas Shopping Season. He made several passes and couldn’t find a parking place. (You know what I mean. We have all been there!) Being desperate, he looked up to heaven and prayed,” Lord, help me! If you find me a parking place, I’ll go to mass every Sunday for the rest of my life and I’ll give up drinking!” Miraculously, a parking place opened up right in front of him. He swerved in and took it. He turned the car off. The man looked up to heaven again and said,” Never mind, Lord, I just found one.” A Catholic School teacher asked one of her students whether she prayed before meals. “No,” she replied” I don’t have to. My mom’s a good cook!”

Our gospel excerpt today is about perseverance in prayer. The Gospel for this, the 17thSunday in Ordinary Time, Year C, comes from LK 11:1-13. I don’t know what you were told in the past several weeks, but when we resumed Luke’s Gospel in Week 13, we heard from 9:51-ff. Luke uses a literary device of the Journey from 9:51-19:27, almost 10 chapters. In week 13 we heard how Jesus had determined to go to Jerusalem to suffer and die and rise on the 3rd day. The old translation said that He set His face “like flint,” in other words He resolutely determined to do this. On the way, Jesus will tell us what He expects of a disciple. 

As an aside, I urge you to get yourself a piece of paper or 3 by 5 cards and write down the main themes of the gospels we hear at Sunday mass through the 31stSunday of Ordinary Time. That’s when the journey will end at Jerusalem. When you do that, you will have your “job description” for being a Christian.

Now, a little bit about prayer. If you didn’t know, Jesus prays more in the Gospel of Luke than in Mark and Matthew put together. So, Luke’s Gospel is often called the Gospel of prayer. In general, prayer is a form of communication with someone who is considered to be in charge of life. For believers, like our ancestors in the faith, God is in charge of life and everything. Modern Americans take pride in their science and abilities and have reduced the areas of life in which God is in charge. Maybe, that’s why some modern Americans have trouble praying.

In Jesus’ world and times, peasants were 90% of the population and they knew they weren’t in charge of anything. Nature determined weather. Landowners determined what they would plant and how much they could keep for themselves. Romedetermined taxes. What could a peasant do? Above all, they could pray. In other words, prayer was a form of communication with one called a “patron”, especially God, who could help and treat the one praying, “the client” as if they were a family member. That is what the disciples are pleading with Jesus: teach us how to communicate with and influence God, in other words, “teach us to pray.” So, Jesus begins by telling his disciples to call God, “Father.” He is saying that God will act much like a human father does with his children. This is called “patronage.” God can do things and get things for His “children,” let’s call them “clients” that they can’t manage on their own abilities. 

This is how we should consider the 5 petitions in the prayer Jesus teaches.

The first two petitions praise God as a children would praise a father. “To hallow one’s name” is to be who you really are: Father, Patron, in charge of all life. “Your kingdom come” urges God to establish His kingdom once and for all. The next three petitions ask for communal needs: sustenance, forgiveness, and preservation from temptation. We should pray these 5 petitions with confidence and perseverance. The word translated as persistence or perseverance should be translated as “shamelessness.” Notice the parable about the bread needed in the middle of the night. Hospitality in the ancient Near East was a given. The man gives excuses about his not getting out of bed and providing the needed bread until he is threatened with having his “shameless behavior” made known to the entire village. (Remember the parable about the woman who threatened the judge until he gave the right verdict. She was going to give him "a black eye.” Same principle.) God is like the man in bed. He doesn’t want to be “shamed” by having it known that He doesn’t take care of His people, His children, His clients. This is how people think about God in Mediterranean culture.

Now, for us in the 21st century. Perseverance in prayer is one of the most important lessons we need to learn if we are going to grow spiritually. In our world today, we hate having to wait for things. That includes waiting for God to act. We know that we don’t have to inform God of our needs (He already knows). “All the hairs on our heads are already counted.” He knows every detail of our lives. Instead, we need to pray and keep asking and knocking so that we can develop our relationship with God. A relationship that is the most important relationship of all relationships, a relationship where we recognize He is our Father and cares and loves us. 

Prayer will always work for us in some marvelous way. We must trust the Lord in that. Continue to knock; continue to ask; God will respond. Amen.   

Week 17C (2022)

          We begin each Eucharist, “In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”  In fact, we begin all prayers that way.  We were baptized, “In the name (not names) of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” At the end of this mass, we will be blessed in the same way.  Almost all of the prayers we use at mass are addressed to the Father through the Son and in the Holy Spirit.  The great Eucharistic prayer is addressed to the Father; relates the Last Supper, the passion and death and resurrection of the Son, and asks for the unity of the Holy Spirit.

Today, we celebrate in a special way the central Mystery of our faith, the Mystery of the Most Blessed Trinity.  It is central to our personal and public prayer and to our faith.  And yet, the very fact that we call it a “Mystery” means that we will never fully understand it.  It is too rich to be grasped.  It doesn’t mean that it is a puzzle to be solved like a Sherlock Holmes mystery or a Dr. House diagnosis, but a Truth to be reverenced and lived.  We would not begin to contemplate such a Mystery but that Jesus Christ Himself revealed this to us.  Chapter 28 of the Gospel according to St Matthew says: “ Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”  God is Father, Son, Spirit.  Three Persons.  One God.  God is one divine Nature in three divine Persons.  God is not just one person.  Nor is God three natures.

Someone once said: “If it’s a Mystery and we can’t understand it, why do we have to waste all this time talking about it?”  Interesting question!  Why do we set aside a specific Sunday to celebrate the Mystery of the Most Blessed Trinity? Let’s examine.

First, let us realize that the word, “Trinity,” never appears in Sacred Scripture.  “Trinity” is what we call a construct.  It is a word that the Church uses to try and capture an idea.  It basically means three in unity.  But, three what?  And where did it come from?  The OT talks about One God.  Jesus talks about God as His Abba, His Father, and Jesus talks about sending the Spirit.  In John’s Gospel, we read about the Father and the Son and the Spirit being one; united as one.  So, to answer that first question: ”Three what?”  we look to Jesus and His discussions of His relationship with the Father and Spirit and say that “Trinity” is the unity of these three.  The Father, His only begotten Son, and the Holy Spirit are one God.  Now, it is hard to get our minds around that, isn’t it?  Either, we think of three gods or one god but the Son and Holy Spirit  are close to Him but not of the same Essence.  Think Arianism!

The notion that the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit are unique and individual and yet are so united that they are one God is almost beyond our thought processes.  (Remember: the story of St Augustine of Hippo, probably the greatest mind in the history of the Catholic Church.  One day he is walking along the shore line and a little child has dug a hole and is taking his bucket and filling it with water and pouring the water in the hole.  Augustine asks him what he is trying to do and he says he is trying to pour the ocean in that hole.  Augustine laughs and tells him that is impossible.  The little child says and so is your attempts at trying to understand the Trinity!)  And, we wouldn’t or couldn’t come up with it had Jesus not revealed it to us.  The very idea that our God is a Trinity of persons is beyond our human imaging! 

God is a Trinity of three divine persons in one divine nature.  God is love. The Father loves the Son.  The Son loves the Father.  The Spirit is the love between them, so real that the Spirit is a divine person.  Community occurs in the Trinity and models community love for us.  Take a look at our world and how messed up it is.  Hatred and lack of tolerance and understanding.  It plays out on our cable networks every day.  Just think if we could love like the Trinity does!  Strife would disappear.  If God is a community, then we should be as well.

      Christmas can seem like something in the distant past. The radio is no longer playing our favorite Christmas tunes, and the decorations and trees are mostly down. Despite what the worlds doing, the Church is still celebrating the mystery of Christmas. It’s a season that extends to the Baptism of the Lord and before Vatican II it was even longer, going until Candlemas, or the presentation of the Lord in the temple.

As we near the end of the Christmas season our Gospel brings us back to where the season started, the manger in Bethlehem. I’d imagine that was a dark night, maybe even a cold night, and yet in the midst of this darkness a light shined in the sky above guiding the Magi to the true light of the world lying in a manger below. 

     We hear of darkness in our first reading. Isaiah told us that darkness covered the earth and thick clouds covered the people. Darkness may remind us of the darkness that covered the earth in the creation story, when the “earth was without form or void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep.” This formlessness and void was known as a primordial chaos, there was no order or structure to anything. Later it became associated with sin; the darkness people choose to live in separated from God.

     In Genesis God spoke and brought order to this disorder, he gave life to all things, in a word he created. In our Gospel today God speaks again. Through his word he enters into the darkness of our world as an infant and as a child lying in a manger he intends to recreate or make us and the whole world into a new creation. 

     We see this in the story of the Magi. The Magi weren’t Israelites, they were Babylonians or Gentiles. They had come a long way to see this king born to the Jews. Usually these men are spoken of as Magi, Wise Men, or Astrologers. It’s also thought that they were kings. As kings their reaction to Jesus is very different than King Herod’s. They don’t feel threatened as if Christ came into the world to overthrow their kingdom, but they’re humbled that this newborn king of kings came to be among his people. When they arrive in Bethlehem they honor and adore him and adorn him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.

     There’s a painting titled “Adoration of the Magi” painted by a follower of Giotto. In this painting Jesus is on Mary’s lap, there are angels on one side of them, and two Magi on the other side. The third Magi is kneeling down in front of Jesus with his crown on the ground beside him. Bishop Barron says that “the crown laid at the feet of Jesus represents the Magi’s recognition of Jesus’ authority and kingship.”

     This recognition and encounter with the Lord led to a change in the lives of these three men. We’re told that they returned to their land, they continued to be Babylonians, but they went back a different way. Like the Magi when we really encounter Jesus, we may go back to being employees as the grocery store, bake shop, bank, or wherever else we may work but we’re changed; we’re not the same when we return.

     You may have heard the story of Alphonse Ratisbonne before. He was a Jew born in Francein 1814. After his brother converted to Catholicism and became a priest, Ratisbonne went the other direction by becoming an atheist and persecuting his brother. At one point in his life he wanted to travel from Naplesto Malta but got on the wrong boat and ended up in Romeinstead. In Romehe ran into a Catholic convert who knew Ratisbonne’s brother. This man, knowing Ratisbonne to be an atheist, challenged him. He asked if he would wear the Miraculous Medal and every night and morning pray the Memorare prayer. Ratisbonne agreed to do it, he figured that it couldn’t do any harm and it would prove how ridiculous Catholics were.

One day he traveled to a church in Rome, Sant’Andea Della Fratte, and in this church the Blessed Mother appeared to him. This experience led to his conversion; he was received into the Church, entered the Jesuits and became a priest. He was changed by this experience and didn’t go back the same way he had come. This experience later influenced Maximillian Kolbe and convinced Kolbe of the power of the Miraculous Medal. 

      Today we celebrate Epiphany Sunday. Epiphany means manifestation. Christ will manifest himself to us in different ways over the next three Sundays. Today, with the Magi, he’s manifested as the king of all nations. Next Sunday at the Baptism of the Lord he’ll be shown to be the Son of God. Finally, the following Sunday, we’ll hear about the wedding feast at Canaand the miracle of the water changing into wine will manifest Christ’s divinity.

     The reason Christ manifests himself to us is because he has a plan for us to come to know the one true God, be saved from our sins, and share eternal life with him. In short you could say he manifests himself to us because he wants us to know the love he has for each of us. 

St. Paul says in our second reading that this manifestation or revelation wasn’t made know to people in other generations before the time of the apostles. There is a unique manifestation of God through Jesus Christ, and this manifestation comes to us through that “lowly handmaid”, the Blessed Virgin Mary. 

      As the Mother of Christ, Mary’s role in salvation history is to bring Christ to the world and bring the world to Christ; something that we saw in the conversion of Ratisbonne. Like her, we have a similar role to play. Ratisbonne was an atheist, yet his story shows us that we can do things like wear the Miraculous Medal, or pray the Memorare, to enter more deeply into the mystery of Christ. By going deeper into this mystery we’re transformed; the darkness of our sins begin to fade as we’re filled with the light of Christ.

     Like the Magi who go back to their country with news to share of a newborn king, we become lights to the world. Christ enters the world through us and through us others are led to Him. 

Perhaps today in our prayers we can stand with the Magi near the manger at Bethlehem and “gaze in deep wonder at what they see: heaven on earth, earth in heaven, man in God, God in man, one whom the whole universe cannot contain now enclosed in a tiny body.”

       If we allow this mystery to change us, if we don’t go back the same way we’ve come then it will be through us that God impacts the future generations of saints. It will be through us that he manifests himself to the world. 

              The devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary has been around for a long time in the Church. More attention was brought to it in the 1600’s when John Eudes went around preaching about the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary. But it really took off after the miraculous medal apparitions to Catherine Laboure and then more recently the message of Fatima.

At Fatima, Mary appeared to the three children and said: “to save poor sinners, God wishes to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart” & then at a later time Jesus told Sr. Lucia “I want my Church to put the devotion to this Immaculate Heart beside the devotion to my Sacred Heart.”

This statement was not meant to take away from attention or pride of place we should give to our Lord in our lives, but it really adds to it. No one was more united to Jesus during his earthly life than his mother; from her he received his body and blood. She was the one that nurtured and cared for him as child and suffered with him during his passion and death. It is her heart that he wishes every disciple to have, because the Immaculate Heart is the perfect heart of the disciple.

There are a few things that we can take away from the Immaculate Heart. If we look at scripture there are at least two places in the Gospel of Luke where Luke speaks about Mary’s heart. The first is just after Jesus’ birth, and the other is in our Gospel today when Joseph and Mary find Jesus in the temple. In both we’re told that “Mary kept all these things, the mysteries of her Son, & pondered them in her heart.” Her actions teach us that our interior life consists in remaining close to our Lord by continuously meditating on the mysteries of His life.

We also learn that Mary’s heart was an open heart. It was from this heart that she gave her fiat, and grace was brought into the world as Christ was conceived in her womb. Hers is a heart that is open to the will of God & fully devoted to God, and she wants us to have this same heart.

I was reading about the image of the Immaculate Heart, and someone wrote that her heart is outside her chest in the image and that Mary is pointing at it as if she wanted to give it to us; to share her heart with us, so that we can have the same virtues, the same purity and love for God that she had.

We heard about a new creation in our first reading, at Baptism we’ve each become a new creation, and in this new order of grace Mary is our mother, the mother of the Church. Her heart not only burns for love of God, but it burns for each one of her children as well, meaning all of us. 

As our Mother her wish and plea to us is that all her children will repent and turn to God, and then make reparation for the sins against her Immaculate Heart and the Sacred Heart of Jesus. We can do this with her help by asking Mary to give us a heart like hers; an open heart, a pure heart, a heart filled with love for God, so that as God the Father gave Jesus to us through Mary, we likewise can respond and return to him through Mary and her Immaculate Heart. 

         Today we remember the first holy martyrs of the Church; those children or holy innocents Herod had killed in Bethlehem. Herod’s not so different from Pharaoh in the book Exodus. Both men had power and authority over their kingdom and lot of wealth. When God’s plans interfered with their plans rather than humble themselves and do as the Magi did, who visited the Lord and gave praise and honor to God, they felt threatened and gave into sin & death.

  Pharaoh had all the males born to the Hebrews thrown into the Nile, and Herod had male children age 2 and under killed in Bethlehem. One thing we learn is that temptations, especially ones based on irrational fears, try to convince us that we’ll gain something by giving in, but in reality it takes everything away from us – and separates us from the one who gives us everything. We see a strange turn of events in the story of Herod. He thought he would secure his kingdom and his title as King by slaughtering the infants. Eventually he died, and it’s the very ones who were murdered, the infants who gained the true kingdom of heaven & whose blood bears witness to Christ.

We too called bear witness Christ by our lives. The stories of Pharaoh & Herod show us that there will be persecution and struggles along the way, but if we remain faithful to Christ and with His help resist our daily temptations then we’ll have everything because we’ll have the Lord. Today we ask the holy innocents to pray for us, that we may always be kept innocent from serious sin so that one day like them we may inherit the true kingdom of heaven.