Tea partiers and occupiers can agree on this

Homily
30th Sunday in Ordinary Time
23 October 2011
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
Daily Readings

Are you a tea partier or an occupier?  Are you patient with Turner Gill or ready for a change?  Are you optimistic or pessimistic about our country and the world?  Are you excited about the new changes to the Roman Missal coming up, or does it not matter to you?

Whatever your opinion on these and the myriad of things big and small facing our church, our university, our country and the world, the readings for the 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time remind us that if we dare to call ourselves Christian, there is one thing that is non-negotiable for us.  There is one thing we must all think and do.  We must grow in love for our neighbor.  This is more than tolerating them or being nice to them.  We must grow in love for our neighbor.  We must love them as we love ourselves. 

This love of neighbor is actually a corollary to the first commandment given by Jesus - that we must love God with all our heart and mind and strength. When asked for the one greatest commandment, Jesus gives two, reminding us that all the 600+ commandments of the Torah are valid because they all interpret each other.  But in a simpler, more perfect way, these two great commandments interpret each other.  We can evaluate our love of God by how much we love our neighbor, and we can evaluate how much we love our neighbor by how much we love God.

Without love of God first, love of neighbor is always at risk of being incomplete, is always at risk of running out.  God is love.  He is the source of love.  Without him there would be no one to love. So unless we connect ourselves to this unending fire of love, by loving him with all our heart and mind and strength, we are always at risk of our own human, calculated love growing cold.  That is why a couple wanting to get married should work on their relationship with God first, always desiring him to be the center of their love, always desiring to love him more than they love each other, knowing him to be the source of their love and seal and guarantee of their marriage.  What is more, loving God first means that we will approach loving our neighbor respecting the love with which they were created.  We will love not only the person, but the image and likeness of God that is essential to the dignity of every person. Loving God first corrects us from hideous errors like believing that killing an unborn child is the more loving thing.   Loving God first means that we will strive to know and love persons as God knows and loves them, that we will be especially attentive to the words of Jesus to love one another just as I love you.  St. John says that this is how we know what love is:  Christ gave up his life for us, so we too must give up our lives for our brothers.  On this World Mission Sunday, missionaries like Mother Teresa are the model for every Christian.  It is a great call and privilege as a Christian to be more like her, who in loving God with all her heart and mind and strength, found everyone to be her neighbor not by geography but from the inside out.  A true Christian, then, does the biggest disservice to his neighbor when he fails first to love God with all his heart and mind and strength, for it is God's perfect love alone that can fully redeem a human person.

Yet perhaps what is more remarkable about Mother Teresa is that when her own relationship with God ran cold, and her faith was being tested, her love for neighbor remained.  She remained true to her mission to love because she understood that to grow perfect in love is not to grow perfect in feeling, but to grow perfect in obedience to the will of another.  Thus, Jesus on the cross fulfills his two-fold commandment to love God and neighbor perfectly, by handing himself over to his enemies and to his Father's will simultaneously.  It only takes a simple glance at the cross to remind us of what love and happiness really is.  It is the freedom to abandon ourselves to a mission that is bigger than ourselves, one that goes beyond feelings, so that Jesus can feel both abandoned by the Father and hated by his enemies, and still love them both perfectly.  On the cross we see why when asked for the greatest commandment Jesus gives two commandments, for internally to him they are one, and externally on the cross we see the two commandments fulfilled simultaneously.  Mother Teresa  too was guided in her later years not by her feelings, but by taking up her cross and following Jesus.  She was faithful to the end because she was faithful not to a feeling, but to a beautiful mission, and she was ready to love God for his own sake, and for her love of God to be measured by how much she loved her neighbor.

It is the great privilege and responsibility for every Christian to everyday be able to see Jesus Christ and ourselves more readily in our neighbor, to be more ready to believe their lives are as real as our own, and be more ready to show that we love God more completely by growing in love for our enemies.  A Christian who truly loves God in the end does not know anyone to be an enemy, for our greatest enemy is always ourselves, and does not know anyone who is not a neighbor, for the greatest evil is always to be alienated from ourselves by losing God.  We should be shamed as Christians always when humanitarians do more for the most vulnerable than we Christians do, for we have our relationship with Jesus Christ as both inspiration and sure guide for us.  We should want to meet a higher standard, the highest standard, because Christ has first loved us.  God reveals clearly to the Israelites, all of us should be willing to be judged by how the poorest and most vulnerable are doing in our midst.

There can be legitimate difference in prudential judgments between tea partiers and occupiers about how best to promote justice and the common good.  Most of us fall between the extremes.  What we cannot be moderate about however, is our responsibility to fall deeply in love with God and our neighbor.  If the world is getting more contentious, and there are plenty who think things need to get much worse before they can get better, the one thing we cannot allow to happen is for this rancor to become more important than our love of God, our mission given by him in this life, and our eternal salvation. Amen.

Christians not trapped by politics

Homily
29th Sunday in Ordinary Time A
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
16 October 2011

Politics.  Taxes.  Religion.  A toxic mix.  Always has been.  Perhaps always will be.   But Jesus doesn't get down in the mud.  He doesn't stoop to the level of his accusers, those trying to trap him with a soundbyte that they can play back against him over and over.  He turns an either/or question on its head.  Rather than avoiding the question, he shows that the question is full of malice, and challenges his accusers to ask a better question.

Politics.  Taxes.  Religion.  They are ways to get people fired up.  They are not always the most pleasant topic at cocktail parties.  Yet in a successful society, the landmines must be navigtaed. and a fruitful discourse must be had in a spirit of seeking the truth in love.  The Church for her part, while heeding Jesus' wisdom to not adulterate religion with politics, still takes an intense interest in the welfare of her children, who are members of political society.  Being a Christian, as our Church reminds us often, is being in the world without being of the world.  Yet out of concern for the common good of our neighbor, Christians must because of their religion be more involved in politics, must care more about the good of the state, as a joyful duty given us by God.

The Church must never be political in the sense of advocating a theocracy, where the laws of a society are directly gleaned from the data of revelation.  Jesus is clear on this.  Give to Caesar what is Caesars, and to God what is God's, keeping in mind that ultimately Caesar is also beholden to God.  The data of revelation is primarily for the sanctification of the human person, and for fostering his intimate friendship with God, who sends His spirit to elevate the hearts and minds of his beloved children.  The data of revelation is first for the formation of man's conscience, a conscience which then makes political decisions about how society should be ordered for the common good.  The Church does not become political as far as taking sides; she is an expert only at the formation of consciences.  A priest, for example, cannot run for public office.  His responsibility is not to take sides, but to form consciences.

Even though the data of revelation is not primarily for the establishment of a government, God's revelation in Jesus Christ does shed light on the nature of man, and the natural law that should be the basis of any good society.  When society makes decisions that are contrary to the natural law, the Church which desires both the temporal and eternal good of man must speak up in support of laws that respect and promote human dignity and flourishing.  We see this today as the Church cannot be silent regarding abortion, same-sex marriage, and the conscience rights of citizens.  The Church in knowing the person of Jesus Christ of course enjoys a special light that can reveal when society misunderstands the true nature and dignity of man.

The Church must speak up despite her own sinfulness.  The evil one enjoys a second victory when because of the weakness of her members, the Church becomes private and abandons her mission to teach and to evangelize.  This homily is being given as indictments against Bishop Robert Finn in Kansas City, Missouri regarding child endangerment are on the front page of the national and local press.  While embarrassing for every Catholic, this sad situation cannot cause us to abandon the mission given to us by our Lord.  That mission is to heal the world from sin, to reach out to those who are forgotten, to promote full human flourishing by fidelity to God's commandments and his promises.  The current spotlight on the sins of the Church cannot make us abandon those whose faith is weak, to stop believing in our mission to heal the world, nor allow the world to live without the light of the Gospel. 

When faced with an either/or dilemma, Jesus finds a both/and response.  Let us not allow ourselves ever as Christians to be captured by the trappings of this world, but be detached and free to live in the world and to love God and one another in imitation of Christ, who has first loved us!

Go into the streets and gather all you find.

Homily
28th Sunday in Ordinary Time A
9 October 2011
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
Daily Readings


Evangelization.  The new evangelization.  It is a buzzword of John Paul II, and Pope Benedict XVI.  It is new because it must find new ways to present Jesus Christ, the hope of the world, to a world who is too ready to ignore him.  It is new because it is a re-evangelization, a re-presentation of the joy that comes from following Jesus Christ and from accepting a deep, intimate friendship with the one who loves us more than we love ourselves.  It is a re-evangelization to those parts of the world who once sent great missionaries to the end of the world, but now are faced with the reality of having more lapsed and lukewarm Catholics than fervent Catholics.  Indeed, right here in our midst, the two largest Christian denominations are Catholics, and fallen-away Catholics.

Many of the reasons why Catholics have fallen away can and should be fixed.  Catholics Come Home is a national outreach to remind Catholics that they are invited to the best wedding banquet there ever was or ever will be, the holy Mass, and to welcome them home to the biggest and most beautiful family the world has ever known, the Catholic church.  Some Catholics do not come to Mass because they are able to rationalize that the Mass is not that relevant, and that they have something better to do, a forgetting of who has invited them.  If the Lord Jesus has invited us to his banquet, and he is surely present there, as he is in every Eucharist, there can be nothing better nor anything more important than our attendance.  Sometimes we forget what our role in the Church is, how much others are counting on us.  Sometimes a past hurt or misunderstanding of the Church makes us openly hostile, and a re-catechesis and a personal outreach are needed to heal these wounds.  All of these reasons are present in today's Gospel, when those invited did not come.  Some even killed the servants who invited them.  We see the same today, when 70% of Catholics do not regularly attend Mass.  A re-evangelization, a new evangelization is needed.

Yet it is remarkable that the king in today's parable does not cancel the banquet.  In a dramatic shift, he goes and invites new people, for those invited were not worthy to come.  The Gospel is a reminder to us as Catholics that our church's strength is not found so much in maintaining our membership, but in reaching out to the good and the bad and inviting them to the banquet.  The world is not our enemy, its people are our patients, those whom we are called to gather at the Lord's banquet, a feast that is a real participation in the eternal joy and salvation that the Lord desires for his people.  The new evangelization is about a new zeal for souls, something Catholics are especially bad at.  We do not feel the pain that we should that souls are being eternally lost, and there are so many who because of our lukewarmness do not have a chance to enjoy divine friendship with Jesus Christ, which brings so much depth, and meaning and happiness to life.

We will not have this zeal for souls, nor a willingness to go into the streets and gather all we find, unless what we receive on Sunday in the Holy Eucharist is of paramount importance to us.  When we come to Mass, we do not do so in a relative way; as the parable says, we must wear our wedding garments, our baptismal garments, to ensure that we are truly participating in the Mass in a way that completely changes our lives, that advances us on the road to sanctity and conversion.  By sincerely repenting of our sins, by going to confession, and by preparing ourselves for the most powerful hour of our week, the Sunday Eucharist, we have no other option after the Mass then to go into the streets and gather all we find.  This is the only response of one who has been truly filled with the grace, mercy and peace of the Holy Eucharist.  Amen. 

Humbly think of others as more imporant than yourselves

Homily
26th Sunday in Ordinary Time C
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
25 September 2011

Humbly think of others as more important than yourselves.

God sucks.  I know this is an unusual way to start a homily, by stating that God sucks.  But these are not my words.  They are the words of a distraught grandfather in the St. Louis airport this Friday.  God sucks, he said to me.  He wasn't attacking me verbally.  He was letting me know that something terrible had happened in his life.  His 38 day old grandson had died suddenly, and the family was at a loss to explain what happened.  They didn't yet have a medical explanation.  Grandpa was heading to Philadelphia to bury a grandson he had never met.  Grandpa was a former Catholic.  He told me that now he is more Buddhist than anything, and that his son had nothing to do with God.  Grandpa came up to me because he was a former Catholic, and perhaps the only one who would say anything at the burial.  There wouldn't be a minister there.  He told me that he was sure that I couldn't help him, that I couldn't justify why God let this happen anymore than he could, that he had concluded that God sucks.  But he approached me anyway.

I'm not tooting my own horn here, but within a minute, I was able to help him.  I did give him a few things to say at the burial, and he thanked me.  I've buried a few children, visited many more in children's hospitals, spent more than a few hours wondering as we all do, why God's ways seem unfair.  The Israelites in tonight's first reading lay this argument against God, why is life so unfair?  God answers their question with a question; He doesn't respond like a bully, enforcing rules because He says so.  No, he asks whether it would be any more fair for the guilty to be allowed to live forever?  God's question shows us what hell really is; not the unfairness of this world, but the situation where men lived forever while never becoming their best selves.  Think about this for a second - would you want to live forever in a world, yes, even this world, without ever becoming the person you always promised yourself you would be?  Would you want to live forever in this world always growing older and never growing younger?  God in his question shows us what hell is really like.

So the unfairness of this world is something we must accept; it is the fragility of life; yes, even accepting the death of children sometimes, that points us away from desiring a living hell, existing only in this world in a sinful state, always growing older and never younger, and makes us long for those spiritual ways in which we capture the newness and fullness of life.  It is natural for us to question God when the good die young while the wicked prosper, for our anger at God is perhaps the only way in the short term we can tell him how good life is, and how grieved we are by its loss.  If we didn't get upset about the fragility of life, it would be because our hearts have grown cold, and that we have grown incapable of love.  We are angry when the good die young because life is beautiful; life is worth living, and there is meaning in sharing life with those we love.  So even when the unfairness of life hits us the hardest, we know that God who created this world, even if we do not fully understand his ways, is good.  Life is worth living because God is good.

St. Paul shows us in the letter to the Philippians how to cut right through the unfairness of the world; yes, even how to get over the guilt of our good fortune while others around us are so unfortunate.  Humbly think of others as more important than yourselves.  Mother Teresa put it this way:  compassion is believing that another person's life is as real as your own.  Now most of us are familiar with evolutionary arguments that show that there are survival advantages to loving others, to helping others, to sharing life with others.  Those who love and are loved live longer.  But what Paul and Mother Teresa are talking about is something that goes beyond biology; they refer to something that only makes sense if man has a transcendent spiritual freedom.  They encourage us not to love to the point of personal biological advantage, but to love to the point of biological death.  They speak of self-forgetfulness.  They speak not of loving in order to live; they speak of living in order to love.  For a true Christian, love is more important than life.  As St. Paul would tell the Corinthians, if I have life, but have not love, then I am not a person.  I am nothing.

That is why a true Christian, when he has a chance to end his life in order to grow perfect in love, does so.  Christians are to become experts at finding a way to end your life; either spiritually, through a perfect self-forgetfulness, or vocationally, through the priesthood, religious life or marriage, or physically, through the blood of martyrdom.  No one sees biological self-advantage in the cross; the cross is not loving so enhance one's life; it is self-abandonment for the good of the other.  The cross is the path to true and new and everlasting life, a life that is no longer measured in hours but by the depth of love.  Jesus ended his life when a path of perfect love presented itself; he who could not know suffering and death took the form of a slave, and chose the most hideous means of torture so that we would never doubt that love is more important than life.

It's not that a Christian can't wish that life would be more fair.  It's not that we can't get upset when we don't understand, or that God's ways make perfect sense to us.  But we need not say that God sucks, for the fairness of life is not the ultimate question for a Christian; we are baptized into the death of Christ so that our ultimate question is not whether life is fair, but whether life presents me a personal opportunity to grow perfect in love, which is my heart's deepest desire.  To that ultimate question, the answer is always yes.  And insofar as we live this question, the unfairness of this world can never trap us, and there are never a shortage of opportunities to move toward that eternal life for which I am made.

To this great end, let us heed the words of St. Paul.  Humbly think of others as more important than yourselves.  Amen. 

Charity is the fullness of justice

Homily
25th Sunday in Ordinary Time A
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
17 September 2011

Life isn't fair, and it's not going to be, because God has chosen to permit inequality.  Yes, God, from whom justice comes, without whom justice is an illusion not grounded in ultimate reality, He whose thoughts of justice is are 'far above our thoughts' and whose ways of justice is 'far above our ways', yes, He permits inequality.  The one who knows about fairness better than we does not force life to be fair, at least not by our standards.  God permits inequalities, yes, we even dare to say he desires inequalities.  Indeed, God seems far above our protestations of how we would run the world differently, rewarding the good and punishing the bad, preventing bad things from happening to good people.  Indeed, the one who is the author of justice and fairness seems to scoff at our judgments.  In our sense of justice, we identify with the laborers who go out at dawn and earn a full day's pay, while those hired last receive charity.  We identify with the elder son who is loyal to his father, who has to watch his father kill the fatted calf for the delinquent younger son.  We identify with Martha, who works in the kitchen tirelessly to prepare a meal for our Lord, yet is told in the end that her sister Mary who has done no serving has chosen the better part.

It is true in these great parables of Jesus, the basic justice and fairness of God is hidden, while a greater justice, that of charity, is highlighted.  It would be the most superficial of readings of these great parables, to say that God is not fair, that he plays favorites, that in the end, each man will not get what he deserves.  We have the parable of the separation of the sheeps and the goats, for that which you failed to do for my brothers and sisters, you failed to do for me.  We have the great apocalyptic tradition of the Church of how God's justice will be at the end of time, the tradition of purgatory where everything will be set right before it enters the heavenly gates.  We do not for a second need to read in today's parable a deficiency in God's justice.  We might accuse God of unfairness, but in our heart of hearts we know that God is just, and that it is our ways, not his, that are unfair.

Nor should we read into this parable that a follower of Jesus can neglect justice to the preference of charity.  It is never an either/or equation, but a both/and relationship.  Catholics have been instructed that it is morally sinful not to participate responsibly and actively in the political process, to contribute to the civic good and the building up of a society that protects the rights of its citizens and works for justice.  The Church for her part has the responsibility to correct societies and governments when they make errors regarding a true sense of justice, for example, in the area of abortion, and more importantly, the Church serves the state by forming the consciences of its citizens so that leaders with the highest understandings of justice and human flourishing may be elected.

But it should be easy for us to see, and to admit, in receiving the parables of Jesus, that justice is not the Church's final aim, nor her final responsibility.  Jesus did not establish the Church only to make the world more fair.  The Church contributes to the establishment of justice, but Her genius, the reason Christ established Her, is to show forth God's charity, the charity that shines so brightly in today's parable.  In God's view, charity is not a means to justice, justice is the foundation of charity.  Justice is not the end for God, it is the beginning.  God's highest attribute is his charity, so much so that we are saying something more when we say God is love than when we say God is just.  And so with us, made in God's image and likeness.  We do not say that justice is our origin, justice our final calling, justice is our perfection in heaven.  No, we say that love is our origin.  Love is our constant calling.  Love is our perfection in heaven.

Our view of heaven then is not a place where everything is finally equal, but the place where everyone has grown perfect in love.  There will be nothing lacking in heaven, but what we'll notice ns heaven is not the fulfillment of justice, but the fulfillment of charity.  Our view of the Trinity as Christians is not amazement in how three persons can share the Godhead equally, but our amazement is how completely the three persons give themselves away in love.  In the same way here on earth, Christmas is not necessary for the redistribution of wealth, with the rich giving away what they have to the poor in a sense of justice.  No, Christmas is much deeper than that, much more meaningful.  Christmas is a gift-giving contest, where gifts are an expression of the deepest desire of the human heart, to grow perfect in love.

We all have a sense that there is something deeper than equality, something deeper than our own sense of justice.  Even if we had equal abilities and equal possessions, the idea that the need for charity would be eliminated should appal us.  The parables of Jesus show us that charity is greater than justice, that the goal in life is not to make sure everyone has the same, but to grow perfect in love by becoming more dependent upon God and one another.  In this light we come to appreciate why God creates difference and permits, even at times seems to desire inequality, even to the point of raining his goodness on the unjust and chastising the just.  God does all this for the greater purpose of enouraging us to grow perfect in love.

Even when justice is not yet complete, as in today's parable, opportunities abound for Christians to discover their vocation, to be called by God to work in his vineyard, to accept a personal invitation from God to give ourselves away completely in the priesthood, in religious life, in marriage or in other extraordinarily callings.  Whenever this invitation from God comes in our lives, early or late, we should thank God for our vocation, and for the path that allows us to grow perfectly in love with God and with one another.  This is the only acceptable daily wage for the true Christian.

While we work for justice in the world, so that more and more people have the opportunity to live in a good world where it is possible to love God and your neighbor with all your heart, and mind and strength, let us not forget that God permits inequalities so that we are all beggars and all givers, and that while working for justice, the opportunities to grow perfect in love are all around us.

Intensity - love and hate

Homily
24th Sunday in Ordinary Time A
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
10th Anniversary of the Attacks of 9/11
11 September 2011

For the sake of his sorrowful passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world.

 - from the prayers of the Chaplet for Divine Mercy

At the dawn, the very first year of the 21st century, an icon emerged that threatens to be the dominant image of humanity for an entire century - the falling of the World Trade Towers on September 11th, 2001.  This is not an overstatement, at least not from our perspective in America, on the 10th anniversary of these horrendous attacks.  Amidst the many tragedies and triumphs of our new century, many of which, including tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes, wars, and yes, if we dare to admit it, abortion, that have claimed countless more lives than the 3000 lost on September 11th, still the memory of those towers collapsing, and the sheer evil that made such attacks possible, is the dominant image of the 21st century so far.  The dominant image is one of moral evil, an evil that today as much as ever is strong enough to dominate man, to threaten his future, and to question his ultimate origin, the meaning of his life, and his final destiny.

But the image of evil is not the only icon that remains from 9/11.  There is as well Body Bag 0001, the fallen hero Fr. Mychal Judge, a chaplain for the Fire Department of New York, who when he first heard of a plane hitting the World Trade Center, responded immediately to help.  As we know well, first responders in droves came to help at the scene, most of them Catholics, and gave their lives trying to save someone else's.  They fulfilled on that fateful day the beautiful words that Jesus said himself; no greater love has anyone than this, than to lay down one's life for one's friends.  It was their job, but the courage and love with which they responded is a bulwark against the evil that threatened to dominate the day. 

And people prayed.  In the face of unthinkable evil, people acted with love and courage, and those of us unable to respond immediately in other ways, we prayed.  These images of love and prayer may not be as dramatic as that image of evil, of those planes flying into the world trade center, an evil that changed the world forever, but they are images that small as they are, when added together, allowed the light to continue to shine through the darkness.

Our scriputure readings today challenge us to understand the uniqueness and depth of the mercy that Jesus Christ has revealed and made perfectly present in the world.  Yes, you heard me right, the mercy of God is the most real thing in the world, and it is perfectly present here, because Jesus Christ has nailed the sins of the world to the Holy Cross, and He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.  For a Christian, the suffering and death of Jesus Christ is an event in time, a day in history not unlike the events of 9/11, that forever changes the world.  But for the Christian, the two events do not stand side by side.  For the Christian, the suffering and death of Jesus Christ anticipates and swallows the events of 9/11, so that even when evil appears to have won the day, a Christian may not lose his faith, hope and love.   Yes, you heard me right again, the suffering, death of Jesus Christ is for us a bigger event in history, the smaller as it were anticipating and swallowing the larger, so that when a Christian has every reason to lose faith, to lose hope, and to give up on love, the opposite happens.  Because a Christian kisses the cross of Jesus Christ, and conforms his own life to the mystery of the cross, when something unthinkably evil happens, we immediately know that God is more present, not less present.  We know that God never disappears in the face of evil, but even in the very heart of the mystery of evil, wants to be perfectly present there and to conquer that evil through love.  Because the cross of Jesus Christ is an event in history that turned the world on its head forever, we know the victories of evil to be temporary and illusory, but that justice, mercy, goodness and peace are always stronger, and are the only things that can last forever.

Using the cross of Jesus to make sense of 9/11 is not a way for a Christian to gloss over the tragedy of 9/11, to call evil good and good evil, or to pretend like the pain of 9/11 was not really that bad.  It is to do nothing of the sort.  The response of a Christian to such evil is not to ignore it, or desensitize oneself to it.  No, we know our hearts should be burning, that we are to reach out in love to console those who have lost someone they can never get back, and to mourn the senseless loss of so much goodness in the world.  We are to help in any way we can, but also to join God in responding in hating pure evil with a perfect hate, and in resolving to fight more bravely against cowards who would use the name of God to slaughter the innocent.  Yes, the events of 9/11 challenge us to preserve more intensely the goodness that still remains on earth, and to take care of those we love, while also hating evil more perfectly.

Yet what truly makes Christians unique is the mercy that Jesus taught us, and revealed most perfectly in the mystery of his own life.  Love your enemies.  Pray for those who persecute you.  Forgive seventy times seven times.  If we do not know and live this mercy of Jesus precisely, we do not deserve to be called Christians.  It is not enough for a Christian to hate evil perfectly, he must also forgive his enemies from the heart, and in the face of evil, to resolve to move closer to God and to his enemies in love, so that evil and hatred have fewer and fewer places in this world to grow and prosper.  You do not have to be a Christian to hate evil perfectly, but Christians are those uniquely called and helped by Jesus himself to ride into the face of evil and to conquer it with love.

The suffering and death of Jesus is an event that like 9/11 has changed the world forever.  Jesus gives us the perspective that we need to live on not in fear and hatred, but with a more intense faith, hope and love, yes even in a world threatened by unthinkable evil.  For Jesus teaches us that even as the battle against good and evil takes place in the ambiguous battle lines of Islam versus Christianity, East versus West, secularism versus fundamentalism, and countless other battle lines, our Lord remind us that the ultimate battle line between good and evil rides right through the human heart, in yours and in mine.  At every Mass, we pray for an end to evil in the world around us, to be sure, but more personally, we pray for mercy for the evil we have done, and the good that we have failed to do.  Jesus teaches us well where the ultimate source of evil is, not out there, but in here.  He teaches us perfectly that to fail to forgive our brothers is to pass judgment on ourselves, to allow hatred and evil to have the final say in our hearts.  In the memory of 9/11, let us say with God that the perpetrators of 9/11 have already had their victory, they have had their reward.  But because of Jesus Christ, their victory is vanishing like smoke.  Let us resolve as Christians to not give them a victory that they do not deserve. Let us always respond to greater evil with greater mercy and love, in imitation of the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.  Amen.

Madrid for World Youth Day

I'm currently in Madrid with pilgrims from the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas, including 22 of our seminarians and Archbishop Naumann. So far so good. The flight over was really easy, compared to many international flights 6 hours from Dulles. The flight home next weeks looks much more grueling. Lisbon to Munich to Chicago to Kansas City.

Our hostel accommodations are crowded but fine. Lots of arguing trying to get enough beds for everyone, but besides the 'honey who shrunk my bathroom' reaction the rooms are fine and cool and the water hot. Speaking of hot, it's in the 90s everyday so far in Madrid, but it doesn't feel that badly, only 30% humidity. It's feels great in the shade actually.

On day one we pushed through the jet lag and saw the new Madrid cathedral, followed by an evening Mass at the original cathedral where St. Isidore and his wife Mary, one of only a few canonized couples, and the patron saints of Madrid, are entombed. On Saturday we visited the gorgeous town of Segovia, and spent time in the old cathedral, had Mass at a Dominican convent, and then said evening prayer at the tomb of St. John of the Cross, with a visit to a castle in-between.

We're getting the hang of Spain. Madrid is a busy but beautiful and fun city. Only one theft so far in our group. They are night people here - everything runs hours behind our normal schedule back home. We're eating around 8:30pm in the evening, which is absurdly early for the folks here, but with 500,000 plus pilgrims descending upon the city, I'm sure there will be lots of food available at all times.

Remarkably, the siesta is as sacred here as having 500,000 pilgrims. Yes, most of the ancient churches are locked from 2-6pm, with a matter of fact sign telling you to come back later. They assume of course, that you, like them, will be up until 2am everyday.

More later.