Organic Catholicism

Homily
26th Sunday in Ordinary Time B
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
Daily Readings


When it comes to sexuality, there can be little question that the Catholic Church has the most natural, organic view of sexuality that is out there.  Even those who would say that same-sex marriage is natural, based in genetics and biology, must admit that there is no natural, organic way for a same-sex couple to have children.  Not every marriage entails children, to be sure, but neither can children be eliminated as an important component of the definition of marriage.  We see same-sex couples all the time in the news getting married in order to try to have children.  Yet in a same-sex marriage, children can only be manufactured artificially.  Such children, without saying anything negative about their beauty or dignity, which of course is not decreased whatsoever by how they were conceived, cannot be conceived in a completely natural way.

Somehow we've gotten to the point in our moral thinking where chastity has become the most unnatural thing imaginable, even though the virtue of chastity, which is having sex only in the most self-sacrificial and most fruitful way possible, entails no artificial processes whatsoever.  Somehow we have convinced ourselves that popping hormones and wrapping ourselves in prophylactics is more natural and organic than saving sex for marriage.   There are too many who feel comfortable in a world where it is taboo to eat artificial foods but increasingly necessary for all people to use artificial contraception.

Trust me, it's not the most fun thing for a preacher to revisit the same issues of abortion, artificial contraception, and same-sex marriage, over and over and over.  Yet it does more damage, I'm afraid, to pretend that these issues will go away, or to pretend that our Church will eventually cave-in to the moral norms of the culture.  It perhaps cannot be said enough that the Church cannot and will not change her moral teaching on abortion, artificial contraception or same-sex marriage, as grounded as her moral tradition is in the law of nature and in the law of Christ.  It should be easy to see that these three issues are organically and naturally tied together, and if we can count on anything in the future, we can count on the Church being consistent and strong in her moral teachings.   There is no way for the Church to be anything else.  The Church will never stop demanding that children have a right to be conceived and nurtured in the most organic way possible, within the loving and natural embrace of a man and woman who have pledged sacrificial fidelity to each other and to their children for life, and withinin a society where such a family is encouraged and supported.  The Church refuses to cave in to a worldview that insists that its food is more organically conceived and nurtured than children.

This should not be a news flash to anyone who is trying to live the Church's teaching - being Catholic is not going to get any easier in the near term.  I'm not predicting great persecutions or anything like that, but it doesn't take a genius to see that the Church and the culture are on a collision course.  It is a battle that the Church didn't pick, but one that she can't shy away from either.  By the Church of course I mean not only the magisterium, but also all of us, who must decide if we dare remain Catholic whether we are ready to weather the storm inside the Church or to actively know and promote the culture of life as part of the new evangelization of our Church.  As Moses said and Jesus repeated - would that we would all be prophets - the more the better - and whoever is not against us, is for us.  Jesus' hard sayings at the end of the Gospel show that in teaching hard things, and standing up for the truth about sex and marriage, requires pruning of ourselves and our Church.  We must cut off those parts of ourselves that are afraid of being unpopular, for there seems to be no other choice.  As we stand for these truths however, we do so as sinners ourselves, never passing judgment on another person.  Being a Catholic means now, as much as ever, to stand with the truth in love, never compromising in the least, on either one.  Amen.  

Parents at war with children

Homily
25th Sunday in Ordinary Time B
22 September 2012
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
Daily Readings

I just returned from Ireland this week so I wasn't on campus, but I heard the Justice For All exhibit visited KU, an exhibit that almost annually tries to re-sensitive the university to the reality of abortion, the greatest civil rights issue of this generation.  Of course we all know that the Catholic Church is and will always be unequivocally and unconditionally pro-life and anti-abortion.  How can we be anything else, given that the author of all life humbled himself to be conceived in the womb of our Blessed Mother Mary?  The Catholic Church will never rest until the sacredness of all human life, especially in its most vulnerable phases, is protected to the utmost by laws that reflect the truth of natural and divine law that found what it means be to Catholic.

Since St. Lawrence does not sponsor the Justice for All display on campus, I am not going to comment on the effectiveness of their method to win hearts and minds for the pro-life cause.  In reading a draft of a proposed letter to the UDK editor from one of our St. Lawrence students, however, Ialso read an opinion piece already published that gives insight into what the pro-choice movement really cares about.

The editorial championed the right of every person to decide their own life.  Choices, choices, choices are what make life worth living, and the more choices you have, the better life you have.  Choices ground human dignity and give meaning to life, was the gist of the editorial.  Leaving to the side the hypocrisy that those children who are wanted are called babies in the womb and their future right to decide for themselves is protected, and those who are not wanted are called tissue and their future right to decide is completely ignored, and notwithstanding the maxim that everyone who is pro-choice has already been born.  Leaving that to the side, the basis of the pro-choice movement is good, if still incomplete.  There is no freedom without choices.  Choices are good.  To be without choices is to lack the ability to shape one's life according to conscience.

Yet the right of every person to decide their own life is incomplete.  It is incomplete first of all because my right to decide cannot impinge on another person's right to decide, or more fundamentally, on another person's right to life.  It is incomplete as well because the right to decide means something different for each person.  The right to life means the same for everyone.  The right to decide means something different for everyone.  The right to decide means something different for someone who scored a 36 on her ACT, and for someone with a learning disability.  The right to decide means something different for a kid training to be an Olympic athlete, and another kid battling cancer.  The right to decide means something different for the mother and the father of an unplanned pregnancy.  The right to decide, and to make choices, is an essential component of real freedom, but it is not the real basis of equality.

This is why we used to talk about rights and responsibilities together, never separating the two.  In the editorial there was the championing of the right to decide, but no talk of the responsibility to serve or to choose the good.   Today we hear thousands of discussions about new rights like rights to same-sex marriage and rights to birth control, but rarely do we hear talk of new responsibilities.  It used to be a cardinal sin to talk about rights without simultaneously talking about responsibilities, for it was assumed there could never be a new right without a new responsibility.  Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.  When was the last time that you heard a discussion about a new responsibility?

And yet this is what we need from our leadership today - more talk about responsibility.  For what inspires human persons, and what makes a country great, is not merely the ability to control my own life, to decide for myself, to do what's best for me, to have what I want when I want it.  This does not inspire, but only kills the human spirit.  What inspires human persons is the opportunity to be obedient to something greater than themselves, something they believe in.  What inspires is to not only do one's own thing ,but to gather together with those who use their freedom not for selfish ambition, but to choose the good, the true, and the beautiful that transcends our own choices.  What inspires is the opportunity to give up my right to control my own life, and to sacrifice my choices, so that others may have life and have it in more abundance.  True leaders, then, talk not merely about new rights, but even more importantly about new responsibilities.

Jesus chastises his disciples in today's Gospel for being so focused on what makes me, me, that they fail to see gift of love he is about to make to them, and the mission of self-sacrificial love to which he is inviting them.  As a test of whether his disciples were more focused on their own ambition or upon their true mission, he places a child in their midst, to see if receiving this child messes up their ambitious plans.  In the same way, a test of whether a nation is more interested in rights or responsibilities, in mere choice or in real freedom, is how it receives children.  For the mark of real freedom is not merely more rights, but more responsibilities.  The mark of real freedom is not independence from others or the right to control one's life, but is vulnerability and dependence, the ability to give our lives to a mission bigger than us.  True freedom can never exist, then, when parents are at war with their own children.

Be the 10%

Homily
21st Sunday in Ordinary Time B
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
Registration Weekend
26 August 2012
Daily Readings

Taken out of context, it would be hard to find more offensive words to our modern liberal feminist sensibilities than to say that wives should be subordinate to their husbands in everything.  Couples typically shy away from Ephesians Chapter 5 as a lectionary selection for their wedding, even though it contains the most profound theological explanation of how Christ and His Church ground the great sacrament of marriage between a man and a woman.  They don't choose this reading because that line is so hard to hear.  Taken out of context, wives be subordinate to your husbands in everything sounds like something from Islam, or makes our Church sound stuck in the patriarchal dark ages rather than a player in the modern dynamic between men and women.

Taken in context, however, this hard saying becomes beautiful and true, as do all of the hard sayings of our Lord Jesus.  Taken in the context of what St. Paul says about the role of men, that their mission is to make women holy by cleansing them with the sacrifice of their own bodies, in imitation of Christ, the words find their power.  Taken in the context of being able to look at a crucifix, and to see what it means for Christ the bridegroom to become one flesh, one spirit with his bride the Church, then the words wives be subordinate to your husbands in everything become quite easy to hear, since we all as Christ's bride the Church gladly place ourselves under the beauty and power of our Lord's beautiful mission to bring mercy and reconciliation to the world.

To be Catholic today is to live hard truths, and to be faithful to hard sayings, that cause many to shy away from Christ and from a Church they find irrelevant to their lives.  To be Catholic particularly at a public university is to live at the intersection of good or evil, truth or relativism, and vocation or ambition.  With every challenge to your Catholic faith, there is the reality that 90% of Catholics will walk away from their faith like almost all of Jesus's disciples, because his saying were too hard, whereas only 10% will use the challenge to deepen their understanding of what they believe, and more importantly, will take the challenge as an invitation to deepen their relationship with Jesus Christ.

I pray that this year more than 10% of you will use the resources of the St. Lawence Catholic Center to deepen your understanding of Catholicism and consequently, to take the next steps in the development of your relationship with Jesus.  

Don't water down, double down

Homily
20th Sunday in Ordinary Time B
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
19 August 2012
Daily Readings
Audio

Have there ever been more radical, more divisive, more scandalous or more outrageous words ever uttered from the lips of a human person than the words uttered by our Lord in tonight's Gospel - unless you eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you.  Talk about an absolute statement.  Talk about words that do not admit of equivocation.  When asked to water down his talk about his flesh being living bread sent from heaven, Jesus our Lord does the opposite.  He doubles down.  He says those who are not eating his flesh and drinking his blood are already dead.

What a tremendous blessing to have these strong words about the Holy Eucharist before we receive our Lord on the eve of the beginning of classes at KU.  When Jesus was asked to water down his teaching about  his flesh being real food and his blood being real drink, he doubled down instead.  As those of you who are returning to KU already know, and as those of you who are new are about to find out, for every opportunity there is to strengthen your Catholic faith while at KU, there are hundreds of other moral, spiritual and intellectual temptations to water it down.  Unfortunately, only a small percentage of Catholics arrive at KU with a gameplan that is up to the task of standing strong in the truth, the beauty and the wisdom of the Catholic faith and tradition.  There are unfortunately more Catholics at KU ready to water down than to double down, too many who are ready to allow their Catholic faith to be stolen from them without even putting up a decent fight.

If you haven't noticed, perhaps you will soon that there is getting to be less and less room in the culture wars around us for a watered down, lukewarm, anonymous Catholicism.  There is less and less room for those Catholics who hit Mass when it is convenient for them, and who are casual not intentional Catholics, those who settle for being a good person rather than having their heart set on being a saint.  There will be so many temptations this year for most of you to hide your Catholicism, for to some of your peers and professors, merely being Catholic is to be homophobic and anti-woman.  Very soon it could be that you will be accused of being filled with hate merely for ordering a chicken sandwich on campus, even though you have never had a hateful thought or feeling toward a gay person.  You may be vilified even if you can intelligently articulate the natural law which shows a unique fruitfulness to traditional marriage, and can demonstrate the harm to individuals, children and society for not upholding the traditional definition, and you may especially be hated if you are obedient to the divine law of Christ which esteems the marriage of a man and woman to the level of a sacrament.  In this light, even if you are interested in vigorously defending human rights, merely to be a Catholic is to be dubbed irrational and hateful, so a decision to go to Mass and to live out your faith is increasingly counter-cultural.  At every moral, spiritual and intellectual challenge to your faith, you will need to decide again this year whether you will water down or double down.

As Jesus tells us plainly, to receive the Eucharist is tantamount to putting your whole life on the line.  To receive the Eucharist means to stake your very life on the truth of what Jesus says, and to radically orient yourself toward the distinctive kind of life, the life we call eternal, which comes to those are his fervent and obedient disciples.  It is a life marked by a faith, hope and love so powerful and so distinct from the wisdom of the world, that the life a Christian is living might truly be called supernatural, or eternal.  It is not a life that is the fruit of compromise and tolerance, but a life borne of mercy and grace, a life of profound communion with the innocent victim who loves me and heals me where I cannot love and heal myself.

Standing against abortion or in favor of traditional marriage at a campus like KU may seem hard, but it is easy compared to the risk of receiving the Eucharist.  For there is only one way not to receive the Eucharist in vain, and that is to know and to live out what the Eucharist really means.  To be attached to the Eucharist, to receive Jesus body, blood, soul and divinity in the Eucharist, means for us to be radically detached from ourselves, and what is best for me, and to be radically attached to God and to my brothers and sisters within the Church and without, serving them, not myself, with all my heart and mind and strength.  To receive the Eucharist is nothing less than to desire holiness and to fight for heroic virtue, which is a far more difficult battle than the culture wars raging around us.

To receive the Eucharist means not only to be in communion with Christ individually, but to stand fully and without compromise with the Catholic Church, the mystical body of Christ and his beloved bride. To receive the Eucharist is to try to know, to love and to live the teachings of the Church because for the last 2000 years, through teaching the world who Jesus Christ is, the Catholic Church, though filled with sinners, has proven to be surest defender of the dignity of every human person and the promoter of the high destiny of man.  The Catholic Church provides the surest path to unity and peace and prosperity for mankind.  But more than this, to receive the Eucharist is to claim the Church as my family and as my home forever, and to declare that I love the Church so much that I would die for her.

All this is not to start a fight with the culture because we are Catholics, but it is to say that we will not back down from one if one comes our way.  Serving others wins more converts than fighting.  Whether we serve or fight however, because we are all sinners, we must live out this beautiful and difficult Catholic faith with as much humility and contrition as we can muster.  Our job as Catholics is not to horde and to lord our secret, magical path to eternal life, but to evangelize, and to invite others to be a part of our family . Our job is never, ever to point the finger at someone else, especially when we are teaching and living what the Church believes, but to always, always, always point the finger at ourselves, for we know ourselves to be hypocrites and sinners, and it is our cowardice that has allowed the world to ignore and to reject the beautiful person of Jesus Christ.

As you receive the Eucharist faithfully each Sunday this year, the only way not to receive our Lord in vain, is to try as we might to understand what the Eucharist really means.  When we come to this holy place to receive this blessed sacrament, we must always double down.  Amen.

Companion til the end

Homily
18th Sunday in Ordinary Time B
5 August 2012
Football Complex at the University of Kansas
Daily Readings

You all as football players know the difference between fans and friends.  Fans can be fickle.  They want results.  Their support not always, but oftentimes, reaches a frenzy when you're winning, and fades when you're losing. They are quick to judge and have a hard time seeing things from your perspective.  They don't see things from the inside out.  They don't see all the Sundays in August when you are working your tail off for Saturdays in October.  This is not to say anything bad against fans.  Every team needs fans, and the more  fans the better.  But they are not friends.  They are not companions.

To be a companion means to be the one whom you break bread with.  The Latin 'cum' means 'with' and the Latin 'pane' means bread.  A companion is the guy that is with you most often, the one you eat with most often.  In this light, although I am breaking bread with you this morning, I am more often a fan than a companion.  I am a KU grad, and have had KU football tickets for 20 years.  My priest friends call me a sports fan who happens to be a priest, and I'm looking forward to this season, and am privileged to say this Mass for you, because I am one of those KU fans who truly likes football more than basketball.  Still, I am not with you day in and day out - I'm not a companion.  I'm a fan.  A companion will always be there.  A fan is fickle and weak.

Both Moses and Jesus in today's scriptures are working through this distinction between fans and companions.  Moses realizes that he had lots of fans when he performed the signs against Pharaoh in Egypt, but few friends when things got tough in the desert.  Jesus warns those who started following him because he fed the 5000 that they will need to be more than fans of the bread that feeds stomachs, but must be true disciples and friends and companions of the one who himself is the bread of life if they are to follow him through the tough time of the cross to the glory of the Resurrection.

As you all build this new era of KU football, you know that there are thousands of fans who want to be inspired by you, but it all starts with you believing in yourself.  The improvements and victories on the football field are dependent upon the victory that starts in your own heart, and if you can honestly say in your heart that I am a man who does not turn back at the sign of trouble, who will never give up no matter what on myself or on my teammates, then you are firmly on the road that our Lord Jesus himself trod, and you already share in his victory over sin and death.  I pray that you find not just fans, but companions on this journey that you have committed yourself to.  I thank you as a fan for the hard work that you are putting in.  But more importantly, I bring you the Bread of Life this morning, the one who is more than a fan of yours, but he who is your deepest and truest companion, not only through a tough season, but through the end of your life, even through the grave to the eternal life God has promised you.  May Jesus coming among us humbly this morning help you to seek true companionship, as you strive with you coaches and teammates to make manifest on the field, the victory that Jesus has won in your own heart.  Amen.  

3 apostolic things

Homily
15th Sunday of Ordinary Time B
15 July 2012
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
Daily Readings
Audio

The gospel of Jesus' sending of the first apostles is not just a chance for us to remember the foundations of our Church.  No, in a very personal and real way, it is a chance for us to reconnect with our mission in life ,a mission that is in every way for each of us and for all of us, apostolic.  When we talk about the mission of the first apostles, we talk about three things - they were sent to teach, to sanctify and to rule.  They were sent to announce the Gospel, to drive out evil and to make God's kingdom more visible and real.  This apostolic mission has remain unchanged for thousands of years now, carried on by the bishops of the Catholic Church, the unbroken successors of the apostles.  This is the simple mission of the Church, lest we get confused about what the Church really does.  It is simple - the Church, teaches, sanctifies and governs.  By the Church, I mean not only the bishops, I mean all of us.  The bishop is ultimately responsible for ensuring that the mission of the Church is accomplished, and his priests are his closest helpers, but his ministry is ultimately at the service of our mission.  The bishop doesn't do the work of the Church for us, he animates our work, for we have all been baptized as priest, prophet and king.

So Jesus' sending in today's Gospel should remind us of our baptismal grace and of our confirmation, through which we received the fullness of God's Spirit to do these very things.  And there are no excuses for not doing them, for without cost we have all received our status as God's beloved and graced children, so without cost we are to give.  God can call anyone, and indeed he calls everyone, as Amos attests to in today's first reading.  Amos was just a dresser of sycamores, a tree man, and nothing more, and yet the Lord called him to prophesy to the strongest in Israel.  So none of us has an excuse.  Instead of  accepting our excuses, Jesus gives us instructions so that if we have stopped teaching the Gospel by our words and example, if we have stopped in our struggle against evil, or if we have stopped building up God's kingdom, we may start again.

The first thing Jesus says is that we are to go out two by two at the very least.  It is true that the world is changed more by heroes, prophets and saints than by committee meetings, but Christianity is not ultimately an individualistic religion.  Jesus from the beginning forms a communion of persons and his Church is never a collection of individuals but always a mystical body, an organism.  In living out our apostolic mission in life, it is never our mission to start our own church, for Christianity only makes sense if there is one church, the one church Jesus founded, and no others.  It is rarely our mission to seek holiness alone or to go on mission alone, for ultimately Christianity is not a me project, it's a we project.  If our sense of mission in life does not work together in the Church with others, or doesn't attract others, then it is not apostolic.  It is not from God.  We reject many guys who want to go to seminary simply because they are doing their own thing in life, and are not heavily involved in their local parish.  Christianity is not a religion of loners working on their own thing.  Jesus sends us out two by two.

The second thing Jesus says is that we are to go out poor.  Imagine going on your next trip with no wallet and no suitcase.  What we will find, of course, is that the more poor, vulnerable and dependent we are, the more we are able to see God at work and to trust in his divine providence.  Christianity can never be ultimately about seeking security, insurance and self-sufficiency.  No, it is a radical dependence and focus upon God and others.  This summer, I gave three KU college students and three of our seminarians at our inner city prayer and action mission in KCK the task of trying to feed 60 high school kids for 5 days with $500.  That's less than $10 a week or $2 a day, and yes, there were lots of hungry boys in the group.  I gave them an impossible task, but by the end of the fourth week of our prayer and action mission experience, the group only spent $200 a week.  By asking for help, and letting people know what we were doing, the group realized how many resources were out there.  Even though we were in a poor area of Kansas City, Kansas painting houses and doing yardwork, still the donations kept coming in, and we had to give our leftover to someone else.

Thirdly, Jesus says to stay in the same place until we leave.  I have to admit, that for quite a while, I laughed at this line in the Gospel, like it was a mistranslation or the most redundant and least helpful phrase in the Bible.  I usually dismissed the line as unimportant.  But I've had others explain to me that Jesus is giving great advice here, against people who always think the grass is greener on the other side.  This is a spiritual mistake, to think that if this or that external circumstance is changed, then I will be holy.  We often times feel limited where we are, when the truth is there is every opportunity to love and to preach, sanctify and build up in the exact circumstances in which we find ourselves.  So we find in the end that this is profound spiritual advice.  Stay where you are until you leave.  It means, I think, that unless we find a way to be holy where we are right now, we'll find the same excuses in the next place as well.

May the Lord's good advice and instructions take away our excuses for not fulfilling the apostolic mission he has entrusted to each one of us.  Instead of shying away from it, let us embrace it again joyfully, and find new ways to teach by what we say and do, to battle against evil with all our heart, mind and strength, and so drive it out of the world, and to make God's kingdom more real and visible through our service in the Church.  Amen.

14th Sunday B

Homily
14th Sunday in Ordinary Time B
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
8 July 2012
Daily Readings

As priests we get asked a lot why we move around so much.  By that the question means - why do you travel and why do you get new assignments so often?  Why don't you just stay put, and why doesn't the bishop just let you stay put?  Well, if you have a priest you don't particularly care for, you might be asking the opposite question, but if you'll humor me, we'll stick tonight with the first question.  Why do priests travel so much and change assignments so much?

The answer lies in the priest's commitment to celibacy and obedience.  Although a spiritual father and a true shepherd, and so tied to a particular parish or mission that he is to serve, the priest also belongs to the greater diocese and indeed to the greater church, and has a prophetic dimension to his priesthood that he must fulfill.  He does this in imitation of Jesus, who moved around very freely because he was celibate and poor, and so did not need to make major plans in order to move to the next town, but also because he had this prophetic mission to go out and proclaim the good news elsewhere.  In tonight's Gospel, Jesus hits his hometown and does not receive a hero's welcome.  In this case, familiarity breeded contempt, and Jesus' deeds and words were met with a complete lack of faith.  In this Gospel story, we see the wisdom of moving priests in our Church's tradition.  It is not proper for a priest himself to get comfortable and happy with his parish, nor is it proper for the parish to do vice versa with her priest.  Although we do not take a formal vow of poverty as diocesan priests like our religious brethren, we are expected to be free enough from possessions to be able to move from parish to parish in short order, taking next to nothing with us when we go.  This is in the end one way of avoiding the worst possible situation that we see in the Gospel, which is having a flock unable to listen to a prophetic word or see a prophetic sign, because they are too familiar with the prophet.

It is good to say, then, that a priest should be unattached to things and external circumstances and ready to move, in imitation of Jesus.  In a word, a priest should be vulnerable and dependent, or as St. Paul tells us in the second reading, he should be filled with weakness.  St. Paul gives great advice to the Corinthians that every Christian life should be marked not with self-sufficiency nor with conservative fear but with reckless love and profound vulnerability and dependence.  St. Paul reminds us well that the security that we sometimes feel in the middle of our lives is mostly illusory, and the pursuit of it vanity.  He tells us plainly that we are either in survival mode or prophetic mode.  Survival mode is dismayed by every trial or curveball that comes our way.  Prophetic mode welcomes all kinds of suffering as a means by which we attach ourselves to the things that really matter, and allow those things to shine forth from us.  Survival mode tries in vain to make the middle part of our life last forever, while prophetic mode lives in the truth that how we started our lives, and how we will end them, vulnerable and dependent, is who we always are, whether we like it or not.  In this light we see that St. Paul is not just telling us ironic things that sound clever, he is bringing the truth to light.  It is when we are weak that we are living in the truth, and so are strong.  It is when we are weak that we are strong in our relationships with God and one another, and these things in the end are all that matter.

We need look no farther for the perfect demonstration of this humility, vulnerability and dependence than at the Eucharist about to be made present to us here.  If we pause for a moment to imagine what it costs our Lord to make himself fully and immediately present to us here tonight in the most obscure place and in the most humble of ways, we know our Lord is not afraid of weakness.  May we grow strong only by wanting to receive him fruitfully tonight, helped by the intercession of our Blessed Mother, who first received him perfectly because she was aware of nothing but her lowliness.  Amen.