Veteran's Day - 2013; A Suggestion For a New Patron Saint For Veteran's

Today, Monday, November 11, 2013, is the day we remember the service given by thousands of U.S. military service men and women; those who are still with us, and those who have passed on.

Many of today's veterans who have served in our country's recent conflicts, suffer wounds that are invisible to many of us.  Some suffer from depression, and post traumatic stress disorder.  In an October, 2019 post, I wanted to recommend a saint, who could be a spiritual companion for veterans.  That post is below:


Yesterday, October 4th, was the feast day of St. Francis of Assisi. Now St. Francis has been designated as the patron saint of Italy, Catholic Action, animals, and the environment. A patron saint is considered a special intercessor before God for an either group of people with a specific profession, illness and who work for special causes. I would like to make the suggestion that St. Francis be considered the patron saint of veterans who suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

Now I say this because Francis was not always the little holy friar, constantly in prayer, communing with the birds and the animals. In his younger days, he was an active, wealthy, young buck; the leader of the Assisi party scene, who longed to be a part of the nobility. Now for a commoner to move into those circles, he had to be knighted. To be knighted, he had to perform some great military service for a local lord. In medieval Italy, it was not hard to find some little war, somewhere. As it turned out, Francis’ home town of Assisi was going to war with their neighbors, the city of Perugia. So Francis had his father spring for armor and weapons, and he joined the other Assisian men of arms as they marched on Perugia. The two armies met at a bridge and a battle ensued. Now in those days, soldiers fought each other with spears, swords, axes and daggers. It was close, in your face, combat. One survived by chopping off an opponents' limbs or gutting him. Blood and gore would have been everywhere. Long story short, the Perugians whipped the men of Assisi butts. Those who survived were either scattered or captured. The captured commoners were sent to hard labor for Perugia, the nobles were cast into dungeons, to await their families ransoming them. Because Francis was so well decked out, he was considered to be a noble and was incarcerated with the others.

Now the dungeons were dark, damp, with little water or food. It is reported that Francis tried to keep his companions’ spirits up by singing songs made famous by French troubadours. But eventually, even he was worn down by the long captivity. Finally, his family was able to pay his ransom, and he was released. Francis was bedridden for a long time with illness when he got back to Assisi. When he recovered, he was able to go out once again amongst the hills and valleys of Umbrian countryside. But nature’s beauty no longer touched him. Parties no longer brought joy to his heart. Feeling empty, he began turning to God for help. He would spend more time in prayer, seeking out caves for solitude. As he opened himself more to the Father’s presence, he began to experience God’s love for him, and the peace that comes with it. It was the beginning of his conversion.

In his book, “My Life with the Saints,” Father James Martin, SJ, writes: “My novice director told me that he thought of the saints as older brothers and sisters to whom one could look for advice and counsel.” I would like to think that veterans can see in Francis, somebody they can identify with, and someone they can turn to for help and encouragement.

29th Sunday In Ordinary Time Homily 2013

Exodus 17: 8-13
2 Timothy 3: 14--4:2
Luke 18: 1-8

Every once and a while, the Scripture readings the Church chooses for a particular Sunday may seem a little odd to some of us.  The first reading sounds like a scene from the movie series “Lord of the Rings.” Or the cable show, “Game of Thrones.”  The Gospel reading has a parable that could have come from an episode of “Judge Judy!”  Yet, if we look closer, we will see the deeper meaning that is in both readings.  In the first reading, taken from the Book of Exodus, we see recorded the first battle the Hebrew people fought in, since their escape from Egypt.  They are facing a people hardened by the desert and combat.  Moses is not even committing all of his forces, but is having Joshua go out only with a group of “certain men.” The only reason the Hebrews are able to succeed; is because of Moses’ constant intercession, constant prayer to Yahweh, to the Lord.   Moses at times weakens in his prayer, and the community suffers.  The community in turn, helps Moses, supports Moses in his prayer, through the persons of Aaron and Hur.  And the community is victorious. 

In today’s Gospel, to illustrate the need to “pray always without becoming weary,” Jesus tells a parable of a widow pressing a judge, known for his dishonesty, to give her a “just decision.”  Scripture scholars speculate that her adversary must be a wealthy person; and since she is poor, her only leverage is to harass the judge constantly, until he gives her the decision she wants.  Now we could interpret this reading as showing that if we constantly keep asking God to give us something, we will get it.  However, I would take the position that what we would call intercessory prayer is more than constantly saying to the Father: “Gimmee, Gimmee, Gimmee!”   Intercessory prayer is us acknowledging how dependent we are on the Father; it is us acknowledging that all good things we receive, including the talents we have, the people who love us; all good things have their source in God.

And prayer is more than just always asking God for something.  Prayer is the way we maintain our personal relationship with God.  And God wants that personal relationship with each one of us.  Among the most moving Scripture passages for me, is in a later chapter of Exodus, Chapter 33, in which God calls Moses, “his intimate friend.”  How awesome is that?  But what relationship can be maintained if the communication is only one way; or when we speak to one another, shall we say, once a week?  How many of us have seen or have experienced a family at table, each person working their own smartphone?  And, sadly, they maybe texting other people!  Saint Paul has written that we must pray always, but I think he not just speaking about vocal prayers; but that we keep ourselves always open to that encounter with God, that can occur at any time.  When we gather here each Sunday; when we focus on what is happening here, when we experience the Presence of the Lord in our midst, and in our hearts; it is an experience we should carry with us when we leave here.  Let us be persistent in prayer, whether, as St. Paul wrote, “it is convenient or inconvenient.”  Let us greet the morning with a prayer of praise, and the end of the day with a prayer of thanksgiving.  Let us take a moment to read and reflect on Scripture.  Or just take a moment to sit, be silent, and be in God’s Presence. 

A Benedictine monk once said “Until you are convinced that prayer is the best use of your time, you will never find time to pray.”  Let us strive to be persistent in prayer, persistent in living the Good News of Jesus Christ, so that when He does come, He will find faith on earth.

Homily For 24th Sunday of Ordinary Time 2013

Exodus 32: 7-11, 13-14

1Timothy 1: 12-17

Luke 15: 1-32

Here is a story of how I got in trouble by reading a story in my Catholic elementary school.  As part of our reading lessons, we were reading a story about frontier settler children being friends with Native American children.  One of the things they did together was to cook potatoes in an open fire.  To me, that sounded neat.  So during a summer day, I convinced some of my siblings and their friends to join me in making a fire, and cooking some potatoes.  Unfortunately, I made this fire under a birch tree, to hide this activity from my parents; a tree with low hanging branches.  Needless to say, we did hear the loud bellow of my father’s voice.  My siblings froze in place; me, I took off for the fields, like I was shot out of a cannon.  I was on a neighborhood street, when I came to realize that I had to face the music.  My father pointed out the errors of my ways, and sent me to my bed with no TV for the rest of the day; which for me was hard time.  But the experience was not as bad as I was afraid it would be.

It is a sad fact of life that all of us continually experience temptation; all of us have a weakness, or flaw in our character; which makes us susceptible to sin.  Even St. Paul, in one of his letters, complained about a weakness he had, that continually plagued him.  We are all prone to selfishness, anger, laziness, and greed.  And we at times may commit sins.  Most of us commit, what the Church calls venial sins, which are minor, but still wounds our relationship with the Father.  Sadly, there are some who commit grave sins, mortal sin, which totally destroys the relationship with God.

In today’s Gospel, we read the parable of the prodigal son, the younger son, whom we could describe as being selfish, greedy and self centered.  He wants his part of his father’s estate now, he wants to leave the farm and go to the big city, and have himself a good old time.  He did not care about his father’s feelings; he just wanted to get the money and then hit the road.   How many of us, on some level can identify with him.  Of course we see what happened to him, he is soon broke, he is destitute; but instead of going home with his tail between his legs, he tries to tough it out, tries to find work.  Perhaps his reason is that he cannot face his father, afraid of facing his father’s scorn.  How many of us have been afraid of going to confession, afraid of the reaction of the confessor when he hears of what we have done.  I think we American Catholics are also affected by the fire and brimstone preachers we may hear and see on the radio and television.  Perhaps we are afraid of facing God the Father; sometimes we wonder, “are we forgiven?” 

Then we hear St. Paul say: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.”  We hear Jesus Christ, the Word of God, tell us: “there will be rejoicing among the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”  We see in the end of the parable of the prodigal son, the father welcoming his wayward son with love and joy. 

And that is one of the reasons why the Sacrament of Reconciliation, of Penance is so important.  Besides having the wound of sin healed, we experience in absolution the love, the joy, the forgiveness of God the Father.  The experience is real.

In downtown Boston, there is St. Anthony Shrine, which is manned by the Franciscan Friars.  In one of the Shrine’s chapels is a row of confessionals.  On the wall where the confessionals are, is a print of Rembrandt’s painting, showing the encounter of the prodigal son with his father.  The son is on his knees, being embraced by his father.  God the Father is waiting for us to come to him, and his arms are wide open, ready to embrace us.  Let us go to him.

Homily For The 20th Sunday In Ordinary Time - 2013

Jeremiah 38: 4-6, 8-10

Hebrews 12: 1-4

Luke 12: 49-53

“I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing!”

“Do you think that I have come to establish peace on earth?  No, I tell you, but rather division.”

It is a little jarring to hear these words coming from the mouth of Jesus Christ.  Where is the gentle Shepherd? The one who welcomed little children? The one who talked about turning the other cheek?  Where did this rabble rouser come from?  But should we be surprised by this?  After all, early in the Gospel of Luke, we see John the Baptist, speaking of the coming Messiah, declaring; “He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.  His winnowing fan is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

I think that we sometimes forget that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, Christ the King, Christ the ultimate Priest, is also Christ the Prophet.  He is coming from a long line of Jewish prophets.  And these prophets did not just predict the future; their main role was to speak the word of God, the word of Yahweh.  They spent most of their lives calling the people of Israel back into a loving relationship with God.  Among these prophets was Jeremiah.  He lived during a time when the empire King David and Solomon built up had been shattered, the northern tribes of Israel had been dispersed and exiled.  Only the southern kingdom of Judah was left.  The king of Judah, to insure his kingdom’s survival entered into an alliance with a powerful and ancient Egypt.  Now the price of this alliance was to allow the worship of the Egyptian gods in Judah, which also allowed the resurgence of the worship of the ancient Canaanite gods.  The king of Judah was no longer turning to Yahweh for help and protection.  Along comes Jeremiah, telling the people that salvation lies not in earthly alliances, but in remaining faithful to the covenant with God. He is trying to shake the people up, to bring them back to God.  Reading the signs of the times, he predicted that this alliance would ultimately lead to the destruction of the nation.  The king and his advisers do not want this kind of talk getting around, so they initially try to silence Jeremiah …permanently.  God inspired a court official to convince the king to save Jeremiah; but we see that being a prophet, especially one with an uncomfortable message, has its consequences.  But Jeremiah was committed to reigniting the fire in the hearts of his people, the love for God, to call them to conversion.

Jesus’ coming has changed the world, the old ways of humanity, the old ways of relating which each other, of relating to God the Father, were to be wiped away, and a new heaven and a new earth was to come into being.  His message was not popular with many people, especially those who had a lot invested in the old ways of doing things, in the old structures of power.  They put Jesus to death, hoping to silence the message, but the Father raised Him from the dead, and his message blazed out throughout the world, carried by his followers.  The Gospel of Christ was, and still is controversial, because it threatens the way many see the world and their comfortable relationship with it.  We have seen the negative reactions that many people expressed about Pope Francis’ comments about capitalism, the world economy, and the needs of the poor.  And, yes, when the Gospel is authentically lived; it has the potential to cause divisions among family members, friends, neighbors, and co-workers.  Anyone who is so comfortable with the way society is, the way the world is, the way their lives are, they do not want to change.  Even though the society, the world is so full of injustice, pain and suffering; even though their lives may be empty and at times full of pain; they feel threatened by the Gospel, the call for conversion.  So they try to make the Gospel irrelevant, they try to keep the Word of God in a box. 

And we need to ask ourselves, where are we in all of this?  Has the fire gone out of our faith communities, has it been extinguished in our hearts?  A scholar of the Christian religion, Martin Marty, has called Europe and North America the “Ice Belt,” because he sees the fire of Christianity dying out.  Are we willing stand by and just let this happen.  Our Church, our Holy Father, our Archbishop says no, and they are challenging themselves and us to rekindle that fire which first disciples experienced with Christ, and let it burn anew in our hearts. Let us recommit ourselves to, with the help of the Father’s grace, the inspiration of the Word of God, and the light of the Holy Spirit; to live, really live the Good News.  Let us, as St. Paul wrote, “Persevere in running the race that lies before us while keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus.”  Let us set the world ablaze!

My Homily for Pentecost Sunday 2013

Happy Birthday!

So right now some of you are asking: “Whose birthday?”  Some of you are thinking: “The deacon has lost it sooner than we expected!”  Actually what I am talking about is the Church’s birthday!  Many Christians believe that on the day of Pentecost, the Church was born. 

Now I am going to submit the proposition that there was a chance the Church may not have come into being.  Think about it.  There are Apostles, and other disciples.  Yes, they have witnessed the Resurrection of Jesus, and they did receive his command to go out and preach the Good News to everyone.  But they have seen Jesus ascend into heaven, and now they are alone.  It would be expected that they are coming down from that spiritual high.  Yes, they know Jesus promised to send this Advocate, this Holy Spirit; but he never said when, and what it would mean.  Better that they stay under the radar of the Jerusalem temple authorities and the Romans.  So maybe the safer course is to stay in the Upper Room, worship together quietly, remain in their comfort zone.

Then one day, during the Jewish Feast of Weeks, known in Greek as Pentecost, they hear this sound like a strong driving wind.  Now we New Englanders, we have experienced northeasters, thunderstorms, and hurricanes.  We know what a strong wind is like.  How it can shake a house.  How it will scatter lawn furniture, and scatter toys (which we were supposed to pick up) all around a yard.  Well when the Holy Spirit comes to the Apostles and other disciples, it shakes them, shakes them out of their complacency, it blows them out of their comfort zone, and scatters them out into the Jerusalem crowd, who hear the Good News proclaimed.

 But that is not all that the Spirit brings with it, “tongues as of fire,” came and rested on each one of them.  Now artists have depicted these tongues of fire resting on their heads.  I would suggest that the fire entered their hearts, the center of their very being; and rekindled the fire of love they had for Jesus.  It reminded them of all that Jesus had taught them, filled them with zeal for the Lord.  And when the crowds heard them proclaim the Word with such love, such zeal, such power; thousands were baptized in the name of Jesus, and the Church, this community of faith is born.

So now we have to ask ourselves, where is this faith community, this Church today?  If we are to look at Europe, Canada, and these United States, we have seen with our own eyes, the drop in number of members.  We have seen the numbers of those persons who say they do not belong to any church at all.  We have seen our Hispanic brothers and sisters, both in this country and in Latin and South America, joining the evangelical Pentecostal communities; because they do not see the same zeal, the same fire in our Catholic communities.  Pope Francis has preached that among the greatest dangers to the Church are those with lukewarm faith, who lack the courage to proclaim the Gospel.

So the question we all have to ask ourselves is; do we have a lukewarm faith, are we willing to just remain in our comfort zones, our closed rooms.  Or can we open ourselves up and let the Holy Spirit in, to let it shake us up, and drive us out into the world, to boldly proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ by word and deed.  We all have a part to play in this evangelization; we are all called by the Spirit to different forms of service to one another, and the larger community.

There was a time in early Christian history, when the Church was no longer persecuted; it had become the state religion.  It was no longer a challenge to be Christian, and the local churches were becoming lukewarm.  Many Christians, men and women, wanted to experience the old zeal, so they went tout into the deserts to live lives of solitude, constant prayer, fasting and service to one another.  One day, a young hermit approached an elderly hermit by the name of Abba Lot; and asked his guidance.  The young hermit had a deep prayer life, was able to give up all desire for material wealth, but he still felt something was missing from his faith life.  So he asked Abba Lot, what should I do?  The elder hermit “stood up and stretched his hands towards heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to him, ‘If you will, you can become all flame.”   May we all have the courage to become a flame of the Holy Spirit, and help spread the light of Christ throughout a world in so desperate need of it.

Homily for Seventh Sunday of Easter 2013

Acts 7: 55-60
Revelation 22:12-14, 19-17, 20
John 17:20-26

For me and my fellow Deacons, the story of St. Stephen, as told in the first reading from the Acts of the Apostles, has a special place in our hearts.  Stephen, whom the Church recognizes as the first martyr for the faith, is also the patron saint of deacons.  He was one of those seven men, appointed by the Apostles to serve the Hellenist or Greek Christian widows.  Tradition has it that from this group of seven, the office of Deacon arose. Very quickly, their service of charity becomes also a service to the word; they become proclaimers of the Good News about Jesus Christ.  One of them was Stephen, and he was good at it, so effective at bringing new members into the Christian faith, into the community, that the Jerusalem temple authorities brought him to trial.  Now it was during this trial that he had this vision of the glory of God.  Now a trial lawyer of our time would warn Stephen to keep this experience to himself, to exercise his right to be silent.  But like the prophet Jeremiah, this experience, this vision became like a fire burning within him.  Stephen could not keep it in; he had to proclaim it, and so sacrificed his life for the faith.

Proclaiming the glory of God is a constant theme throughout the readings we have had during this Easter season from the Book of Revelation.  Tradition has it that the Book was written by St. John the Evangelist, our patron saint.  He wrote it while he was in exile on the island of Patmos, a Roman penal colony.  The rest of the Christian communities were under severe persecution by Roman authorities.  It was during this time of crisis that he received this vision of the glory of God, and tried to put that experience into words that could help the struggling communities remain faithful to Jesus.

To experience the glory of God, something so wonderful, so indescribable; I am sure we all think; that it cannot happen to us.  But I would remind us of this phrase that is in today’s Gospel, in which Jesus says: “And I have given them the glory you gave me, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may be brought to perfection as one, that the world may know that you sent me, and that you loved them even as you loved me.”  From the day of our baptism, we all have been made part of the Body of Christ; we are loved by Father just as much as He loves the Son.  That is the glory of God, which is alive in each one of us. 

But how many of us are aware of this wonderful, this awesome fact?  Or are we like the seed from the parable of the sower; people who receive the Good News, but like thorns, we let the anxieties, the fears, the burdens of everyday life smother the experience of the glory of God.  This is the challenge we face, the struggle we are called to enter into; to pull up those thorns that surround our hearts, let the glory of God blossom forth, let the wonder of it fill us with joy; let the beauty of it shine forth from each one of us for all the world to see. 

Jesus, through His Gospel, shows us the way to accept the challenge, to enter into the struggle; if we only will take the time to read it, reflect on it, and live it.  Jesus, through the Eucharist, gives Himself to us, to strengthen us for the challenge, for the struggle, if we only open ourselves to him and say, as St. John did: “Come, Lord Jesus!”