Readings:  2 Special Readings plus Psalm 145 (from Aug. 3) &  John 15, 9.  The readings:

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Celebrating All Souls

I want to dedicate our Mass & homily this morning to two little twin girls, Samantha & Zoe.They were  born Tuesday in Plano Presbyterian to Michelle & Randolf Brown.  Michelle is the daughter of Bernadette & Gilberto Delgado.  Michelle was with us last Sunday or at most two Sundays ago.  Zoe was born healthy & happy.  Samantha died at birth.

I visited Zoe & Samantha Tuesday evening.  I baptized, blessed, & prayed for Samantha who was being held by her dad while Zoe nursed.  Both little girls were beautiful and I had a hard time registering that Samantha had moved on already to the next world.  She is one of our most recent souls whom we honor today, All Souls Day. 

Let me give you a bit of history and the thinking behind this All Souls' Day.  Five observations: the theology, purgatory-limbo, a legend, pre-Christian practices, and today.

1.  The Theology.  All Souls' Day is part of a package with All Saints.  The idea is: on All Saints' Day we honor all those who are enjoying the beatific vision, that is, heaven, the saints.  On All Souls' Day we honor those who have died but have not reached heaven because they have penance to do. 

We are talking mortal & venial sin here.  If the person died with mortal sin, they are you know where. Those with venial sins have to go through purification and purging, which brings us to All Souls' Day and purgatory.

2.  Purgatory & Limbo.  People ended up in purgatory to purify themselves with suffering, before being allowed into heaven.  Limbo was for whom?  It was for people, especially children, who died without being baptized.  They remained there how long?  Forever.  Can you imagine Samantha there or even in the old purgatory?

At least the Catholic Church this year or last acknowledged that the limbo idea was bogus.  Rome has said it does not exist and never did.  Though many consider purgatory to be in the same class, it still exists in the minds of some.    Indulgences are for the souls in purgatory or the living.  It speeds up the process for those in purgatory.  There are partial & total indulgences.  We can win them for these souls and get them out or we can win them for ourselves. 

For instance, on the last feast of Peter & Paul Rome offered an indulgence if you visited a church named after one or both of these two, and you recited a prescribed menu of prayers.  All Souls' Day used to be aimed at winning lots of indulgences for the souls in purgatory.

3.  The legend.   It happened around 1000 A.D. that a monk, St. Idolo, from the French monastery of Cluny was shipwrecked on a desolate island as he returned from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, i.e., Israel.  On the island he met a poor hermit.  The hermit told him that among the rocks was a crevice from which came the anguished voices of the many suffering in purgatory.  Likewise, listening carefully you could hear the devils cursing that living people were speeding up the sufferings of these souls by praying and doing penance for them. 

Some time after this, i.e., 1000 A.D., the Cluny Monastery established an All Souls' Day.  Ca. 1300 Rome followed suit.  

4.  Pre-Christian times.  There is evidence that at least in Mexico numerous tribes had a day or period when the departed ancestors were honored.  The purpose was to honor them, remember their example, and to communicate with them.  In Europe food & drink was put out over night.  Today in Mexico & in Hispanic families here in the States the Day of the Dead is still celebrated.  This custom has been celebrated for 3,000 years.

5.  Today.  Limbo has been discarded by Rome and many scholars consider purgatory a dinosaur idea from antiquity.  All these ideas are man made, not God made.  Consequently, today All Souls' Day celebrates Samantha, my mom & dad, Rosemary's mom & dad, and all our loved ones pictured on the stage.  All Saints' Day still focuses on the canonized.  

Who among these people has touched your heart the most? 

AUDIO:  http://mysite.verizon.net/reso7rjy/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/2008-11-02.mp3

Picture 1: All Souls' Mass & Sabrina

Picture 2: All Souls' Mass & Choir

Picture 3: Hunter & Audry

Readings:  

Deuteronomy 4, 32-34, 39-40, Ask from one end of the sky to the other, did anything so great ever happen?

Psalm 33, Blessed the people the Lord has chosen to be his own.

Romans 8, 14-17, The Spirit bears witness to our spirit. 

Matthew 28, 16-20, Behold, I am with all days until the end of the ages.

Observations on the Readings:

1^st reading from Book of Deuteronomy (Chapter 4)

Deuteronomy is the 5^th  book of Bible and of Jewish Torah or Pentateuch. Though traditionally attributed entirely to Moses, modern scholars agree that it is a collection of Jewish traditions, later adapted to nationalistic reform and its final form coming after the Babylonian captivity in late 6^th century BC.

It is written as if from the mouth of Moses, who was considered the greatest of the prophets, for the authority his name gave the book. See last verses of final chapter 34. The most famous verses are Ch 6:4-5: “Hear O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone! Therefore, you shall love the Lord, our God, with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength.”

3^rd  reading from the Gospel of Matthew (Chapter 28)

This book is the second  gospel chronologically, and was written with the Jewish people in mind, to show  a direct connection between the Jewish Law and the Prophets and the teachings
of Jesus.

Homily

This  year we are celebrating the 50^th anniversary of the opening of the
Second Vatican Council in 1962. I recommend the article in the blog by Giovanni Franzone, a former Italian Benedictine Abbot. As an Abbot, he attended the Second Vatican Council as one of the ‘Fathers’ of the council. He is now 86, and his article gives a fresh “I was there” perspective. I want to talk a little today about Vatican II, which has been called the most significant event in the life of the Catholic Church in modern times.

 Pope  John XXIII became Pope following the death of Pope Pius XII in 1958. Less than a year later, John 23^rd announced that he would call an ecumenical council. You may remember his story of how he had a dream one night in which the church was coming together in a council to renew itself. He awoke thinking what a great idea that was and thinking “I must tell the pope about it.” And then he realized, “Wait a minute, I am the Pope.”

Some of The Jesuit Class of '58, reunion, New Orleans. 2 still active as S.J. priests, one in NY, one in Peru.

So he called the council to  bring together representatives of the church all over the world, including many great minds of the time, and including representatives of other Christian faiths and non-Christian faiths. The two main purposes were “aggiornamento”, a bringing-up-to-date of the Church, and a striving for Christian unity. In answer to someone’s question about the purpose of the council, Pope John once said:
‘to let some fresh air into the Church”. 

I didn’t just honor and give respect to Pope John 23^rd; I loved him—for who he was as a man, and what he did for the church’s world
community. And we also shared the same birth day of November 25^th.

Vatican II continued for a couple more years and eventually

Trinity Sunday Mass at Bob Baxter's house in New Orleans. Cathy Lichliter reading with her husband, Bill, on the left.

documents were approved by the council. Perhaps the five most significant were: The Constitution on the Church, The Decree on Ecumenism, The Decree on the Pastoral Office of Bishops, The Declaration on Religious Liberty, and the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Contemporary World. I will say just a little about the first three, and I hope we can look at more of them, and in more detail, during this 50^th anniversary year.

In the Constitution on the Church, the significant updating was, as
Mike said last week, a new (yet old) vision of the church primarily as the
‘People of God’, equal through Baptism, rather than primarily as a hierarchical and clerical structure. 

Gab Session after Mass. A uniquely moving class reunion of 20 plus men who spent many of their early years as Jesuit classmates. Now meeting with their wives.

The Decree on Ecumenism reached out to people of all
faiths and erased the old belief that you had to be Catholic to ‘be saved’—to be with God. Remember we read a lot from some Acts of some Apostles during the Easter Season.

In Chap.10 of Acts Peter said: ‘I can see now that God is no respecter of persons, but that in every nation anyone who reverences him and
does what is right, is acceptable to him.’ In other words, every human being who reaches moral adulthood chooses between what his conscience judges to be right and what his conscience judges to be wrong. If a person makes the basic choice for right as he knows it, he is in fact choosing God.

The Decree on the Pastoral Office of Bishops included the notion of ‘collegiality’ among bishops with the Pope, that bishops are not just advisors to the Pope, but co-deciders with him and the People of God. The Decree encouraged the formation of regional councils and, all the way down to the parish community level, councils were to be formed to allow participation in decision making by the community from the ground level up. How many of you ever served on a parish community council?

Sunday brunch after Mass

We have good reason to remember the aggiornamento begun by Pope John 23^rd. I remember following the sessions of the council closely with enthusiasm and optimism. My 50^th was last year, so I was ordained the year before the council opened. Stack was just a few years from ordination and no doubt also following it equally closely. Pope John died in 1963 less than a year after he opened the council, and was followed by Pope Paul VI. The article by Abbot Franzone in the blog provides a lot more information about Vatican II and about the role of Paul VI during and after the Council. 

Vatican II is the most significant event in the life of the Catholic Church in modern times. My question today is: how much do we know about it? and how are we living out its updated teachings and its spirit?

Readings: Isaiah 2, 1-5; Psalm 122, Let us go Rejoicing to the House of the Lord; Romans 13, 11-14; Matthew 24, 37-44

First Sunday in Advent – Intro to Readings

With the start of a new Church year we begin a new cycle of readings, this year is Cycle A and the gospel readings will focus on Matthew’s Gospel.  It was written about the year 85-90 CE and used Mark’s Gospel, a source now referred to as “Q” and some material unique to Matthew.  The audience had knowledge of the Old Testament and is presumed to have been Jewish. 

A familiar phrase occurring some 41 times in the gospel is “this was to fulfill….”.  In Luke’s Gospel the major theme centered on Jesus journeying up to Jerusalem.  Matthew’s Gospel had five major sections, each ending with a great discourse, the most well known being the Sermon on the Mount.  Matthew’s Gospel is one of the two gospels to tell us about Jesus’ birth.  Joseph is the focus in this gospel and Mary is the focus in Luke’s Gospel. 

The trigger event for Matthew’s Gospel was the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.  Since the temple was central to the Jewish faith – what was to become of Judaism?  For Matthew it was Jesus, he is the fulfillment of the Old Testament, he is the way forward.

Homily 

The last line of our first reading from Isaiah was “let us walk in the light of the Lord” and I would like to use that line as our starting point for a few ideas on the Sacrament of Baptism.  In the rite of infant baptism, the priest hands the parents and godparents a lighted candle and says “receive the light of Christ”.  By our baptism we are put on a well lit spiritual highway.    

We know that in the gospels, Jesus begins his public ministry by being baptized by John in the Jordan River.  This baptism of John’s was a baptism of repentance.  The next time baptism is mentioned in the gospels is in Matthew’s gospel at the very end of the gospel “go make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit”. 

The Acts of the Apostles and Paul’s letters make clear that this command of Jesus was very quickly identified as the method of joining this group of followers of Jesus.  It became a ‘Rite of Initiation’.  Remember that for this early group, they were Jews first and then baptism made them different.  We have a clear disagreement between Paul and the other apostles over whether gentiles who were baptized needed to be circumcised also.  Paul won that argument. 

Within a couple of centuries we find a big change when the church declares that only those who are baptized can enter heaven and so we have Original Sin invented and baptism was the only way that could be forgiven.  This later let to the invention of Limbo.  It wasn’t until the Second Vatican Council that the focus on baptism shifted back to its being a sacrament of initiation or joining. 

 The point I would like to have us consider this morning is this:  what does being baptized mean to me today?  It may have happened when I was two or three days old, or maybe when I was an adult.  It was a one-time event, but I believe that has an effect in my life every day.  By being a member of the Christian community I am part of a group which focuses on living life according to a set of ideals, has a faith in a God who loves me and who wants me to love my neighbor.  

Just a few words about water, as the main symbol used in baptism.  Water is one of those primal elements, necessary for life.  Our experience of water is fairly simple, great for washing things, essential to keep a lawn alive here in Texas, wonderfully refreshing on a hot day for quenching thirst.  But for the Old Testament people it also reminded them of the escape thru the Red Sea from a life of slavery in Egypt, it was there at the beginning of time at the creation,

 and the waters of the flood destroyed all of the evil in the world.

Even though my baptism was a once only event, each time I come here to the community to celebrate the liturgy, each time I try to follow God’s way I am reaffirming what my parents had done to me when I was three days old. 

Picture 1:   Tony beginning with Advent Candles

Picture 2:   Sacrament of the Sick with Curtis

Picture 3:   Curtis' daughters, Marlene & Cindy

Picture 4:   Ryan with mom & dad, Jim & Michelle

Sophia says, "Hi, Everybody, Welcome in."

Readings:

Isaiah 40, 1-5, 9-11,  Comfort, give comfort to my people (excellent, see Handel’s Messiah)

 Psalm 85,    Lord, Let us see your kindness, and grant us your salvation.

2 Peter 3, 8-14,  With the Lord one day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like one day.

Mark 1, 1-8,   The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Check the Video for a recording of the first part of Isaiah 40, The Messiah.

Zoe, the Beautiful Candle Lighter.

 The homily this morning was presented by Meg Hinkley, who shared her story about a time when she was 18 and preparing for college.  She works for the Dallas Rape Crisis Center and shares a beautiful story of spiritual recovery. 

Meg Hinkley of Dallas Rape Crisis Center shares her moving history.

Buddies, Georgie with her friend, Megan.

Readings:  Ecclesiastes 1, 2; 2, 21-23; Psalm 90, If Today You hear his Voice, Harden not your Hearts; Colossians, 3, 1-11; Luke 12, 13-21

Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time – Intro to Readings

Our first reading is from the Book of Ecclesiastes, which makes up some of the Wisdom literature.   The book is concerned with the purpose and value of human life. While admitting the existence of a divine plan, it considers such a plan to be hidden from man, who seeks happiness without ever finding it here on earth. 

The authorship has been attributed to Solomon, but that was just to get the book some credence.  It was written long after Solomon, around 250-150 BCE.  One could easily conclude that the book is rather pessimistic, as in its opening which we read today, “vanity of vanities, all is vanity”, and it concludes in chapter 12 with the following:  “The last word, when all is heard: “Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is man's all; because God will bring to judgment every work, with all its hidden qualities, whether good or bad.” 

This book is also the source of those well known lines from chapter 4:  “There is an appointed time for everything, and a time for every affair under the heavens.  A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to uproot the plant.”

Our second reading is the last for some time from Paul’s Letter to the Colossians.

The Gospel continues with Jesus’ journey up to Jerusalem.  The opening verse, which is omitted from the start of today’s reading, is worth noting:  “Meanwhile, so many people were crowding together that they were trampling one another underfoot.”  Luke is introducing the sense that things are starting to get serious.  And the reality is that the topic today is a serious one.

Good Morning, Tori, Good Morning, Zoe.  So nice to see you dear girls.

Readings:

Isaiah 5, 1-7,  The fruitless vineyard

Psalm 80,  The vineyard of the Lord is the house of Israel.

Phlippians 4, 6-9,  Have no anxiety at all

Matthew 21, 33-43,  The vineyard owner & the unfaithful tenants. 

Good Morning to you, too, Riley, and welcome in from Atlanta.   It is so nice to meet you.  I knew your mom when she was your age.  And you are as pretty as she was.

Reading 1; Isaiah 5:1-7

Introduction:

The vineyard in Isaiah is a sad story.  Why?  The fruit from the House of Israel should have been praise and thanksgiving to God.  But there was no thanksgiving given and no humility shown.  There was no lived praise or peace or justice.

Thanks, John and Buddy and Mike, for celebrating today.  I knew before we did Paul & Carrie's wedding this weekend, I would be jet lagged out after the wedding and an evening arrival from Grand Canyon and Phoenix.

Reading 2; Paul’s Letter to the Philippians 4:6-9

Introduction:

Today’s reading from Philippians contains a teaching common to several of his letters, “Have no anxiety at all; rather you should give thanks in everything, for that is God’s will for us.

Thanks for the Homily, Mike.

Reading from the Holy Gospel according to Matthew 21:33-43

Introduction: The landowner in the parable is God, and his gift to Israel is the kingdom, the tenants are the Jewish chief priests and elders of the people, the servants were the prophets.

The Father’s son is Jesus, who is the cornerstone, the fountain of living water [the good news], and the source of the Holy Spirit [the new wine].

The Gentiles are to be the recipients of the kingdom.

It was a marvelous, beautiful wedding and I am so peaceful resting in the back row for this celebration.  Thanks again, John & Mike.

Homily

Our Liturgy of the Word always leads us to the Liturgy of the Eucharist. 

Recall Paul’s teaching, ‘In everything give thanks for that is God’s will for us in Christ, Jesus.’

Paul & Carrie begin their wedding standing on the top of the South Rim of the Grand Canyon on a beautiful evening.

In our soon to be celebrated Liturgy of Eucharist, we are presented with the perfect example of Jesus giving thanks to the Father.  Of course, he does so with no anxiety, but instead with thanksgiving. 

Since the bread that we break and share with one another is a participation in our communion with Jesus Christ; we are invited to join with Jesus as a Thanksgiving to his Father.  We, too, as his sons and daughters, through the power of the Spirit, can give ourselves back to the Father.

In the background is the North Rim, to which Paul & Carrie, plus a few others, are hiking this very day.  These dear people are in shape.  More next Sunday.

Judy and I have a friendship with a couple in Austin who, about 15 years ago adopted a baby boy.  After some months it became apparent that he was born with special needs.  In everything they gave thanks. The angels in heaven sought to find perfect parents for the boy; and they did. Today he is still has needs; but he is active, full of excitement, and appreciative.

May each of us continue to seek to do God’s will for us in Christ, Jesus.

The celebration of Greg & Erin continues on with the help of Cole and Diane.