The feast of Christ the King is ironic because Jesus never acted like a king.

What have been the beautiful ways you have encountered the Lord this past week?  There is a side of us that would immediately think of our moments of prayer and our time in holy places.  Today’s Gospel takes us in a different direction.  We encounter the Lord when we feed and clothe those in need, when we visit hospitals and prisons.

The Gospel describes the Last Judgment scene.  “The king will say to those on his right. ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father.  Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.  For I was hungry and you gave me food…The righteous will respond, ‘Lord when did we see you hungry and feed you…And the king will say to them in reply, ‘Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of the least brothers or sisters of mine, you did for me.’”

There is nothing mysterious or difficult to figure out about today’s Gospel.  Each of us will be judged upon our performance of the simple works of mercy we hear in the Gospel.  For me, I need to spend less time behind my desk as the pastor and more time being with people in need.  Please God I will remain people-focused in my priestly ministry.  May all of us be mindful of how we are to wash the feet of God’s poor following the example of Jesus at the Last Supper as He was washed the feet of His disciples.

The Gospel suggests that our leadership in religious organizations doesn’t count for too much before God.  In the last judgment, the only thing that really counts is humble service.

As we gather on Sunday to celebrate the beauty of our liturgy Sunday after Sunday, the Gospel reminds us of the liturgy of life without which all other liturgy in Church has no meaning.  Plain and simple, if we are not focused in the liturgy of life in our service of one another, all other liturgy, no matter how beautiful it is, is pointless.

Today we celebrate the Solemnity of Christ the King.  This is ironic because Jesus never acted like a king.  He embraced poverty, not wealth. He taught humility, not arrogance.  He emphasized service, not domination.  He chose a cross, not a palace.  Kinship, instead of kingship:  This is what Jesus is truly passionate about.  Kinship with “the least, the lost, and the last.”

Jesus doesn’t even use big words like justice or democracy to explain what is going to be on our final exam.  He simply talks about food, clothes, water, and shelter – the basics of life.  Jesus took his stand with the needy people of this world and said in effect:  “This is where I live.” These are my people.  I belong to them, and they belong to me.  Jesus not only cared about the needy and sought to help the needy. He completely identified himself with the needy.  There was His hunger.

God has no other name than Mercy.  Where is the Lord of the Universe to be found?  He has disappeared among the hungry, thirsty, naked, lost, sick, imprisoned, alien and persecuted of this world.  Our King is hiding in the least of our brothers and sisters.

That’s where you and I belong. This is how we strengthen our trust in God.  It isn’t as if the needy are people who need help, and we are the people who give help.  We all belong to the fellowship of the needy.  Who are the needy?  I am; you are; everyone is.  Today I may help you, but tomorrow I may need you to help me.  We are members of the same family, sharing our love, sharing our resources, sharing our needs.

The primary message of this Gospel account is not to inform about what will happen at the end of time, but to teach how to behave today.  In the words of the writer Stephen Covey, we need to begin with the end in mind.  Jesus is suggesting how we must live.

The prayerful questions we ask ourselves:  In what ways is Jesus the ruler, the king of your life?  How does God’s love inspire us to show mercy?

Presently as we are dealing with the fear and threat that has been generated by random acts of violence, sexual harassment, and terrorist attacks.  Is the message of love and forgiveness professed by Jesus as the Lord of our lives get modified as we are gripped with fear of terrorists?  How safe are we from the threat of senseless violence?  Are we still expected to look with love on those whose hearts may be filled with hate?  Can we welcome refugees with love in our hearts if we are paralyzed by our fear that refugees are a threat to our safety?

We mourn the breakdown of our global family and the violence in so many places when humans created in the image of God choose death instead of life, when they choose revenge instead of mercy.  Yes, we need to ask how is Jesus the king of the culture we live in?  It is we who lose when we allow the venom of hatred and revenge to circulate through our spiritual lives.

Closer to home, is Jesus the king of your family life?  Is each and every member of your family treated with the love that Jesus has for each member of your family?  How much of a commitment do you have for family prayer?  Can you really say that Jesus is the King of your family life if you are too busy to pray together?

At the conclusion of the story of every person on earth, when each is alone with himself and with God, only love will be precious.   And we can never love others unless we feel a certain reverence towards them.  From the Gospel, the life of each one will be considered a success or failure according to the commitment of the person in the elimination of six situations of suffering and poverty:  hunger, thirst, exile, nakedness, sickness, imprisonment.

Again going back to the Gospel, in His last words to us in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus is telling us in advance that when we each stand before our God, we won’t be given a test that will be confusing or difficult.  It will instead involve only the most practical questions:  Did you feed the hungry?  Did you shelter the homeless?  Did you care for the sick?

And our answer will be….

Jesus is the great teacher of gratitude...May our lives be marked by a radical gratitude to our loving God.

THANKSGIVING DAY  2017

If you had to describe yourself with just one word, what would that be?  The one word, the one quality that names who you are.

I’m using this introduction on Thanksgiving Day because for me the one word that I think best describes who I am is gratitude.  I know my spiritual life stems from my gratitude for God’s unconditional love for me being exactly who I am, no better, no worse, and no strings attached.  In the experience of gratitude, I come to know the origin and purpose of my life.

The source of my priestly ministry is my desire to express my gratitude for the love of Jesus and for the love that I have experienced from the many, many people who have touched my life.

Gratitude is a prominent and essential part of our parish mission.

As we gather Thanksgiving Day, it is, of course, a national holiday that expresses very well the spiritual roots of our nation.  I am always touched at a military funeral committal service when a member of our American military presents the American flag to a grieving family member and expresses thanks on behalf of a grateful nation.  We are at our best as Americans when we are grateful to God, grateful to one another, and grateful for the blessings we enjoy as a nation.  We are at our best as a nation not by the force of our military might, but when we in humility give thanks for the incredible blessings that we enjoy.

On the fourth Thursday of November, we remember our foundational value of gratitude that was expressed back in 1621 by the pilgrims at that Plymouth Plantation.

Personally in the life of the Schwartz family, thanksgiving is a wonderful family day in which my siblings and nephews and nieces and grandnephews and grandnieces gather to be a family, to play a little football, enjoy a bit of food and drink, but most of all to give thanks for the love that is shared in our family life.  We are not perfect.  Our family has its share of messiness.  We argue.  But, most of all, we love one another and are grateful for each and every member of our family.

In today’s Gospel of the healing of the ten lepers with only the Samaritan returning to give thanks, it is important to note it is not a matter of the divine love of Jesus going out to only one of the lepers.  The healing is given to all as a sign of God’s design to offer salvation to everyone without exception.  While only the Samaritan expresses gratitude, the evangelist Luke in this account is portraying God as relentlessly pursuing us who are relentlessly running away.

We are the gracious recipients of the unconditional and unending love of God.  We are all God’s beloved sons and daughters.  What we seek to focus on in this Gospel message is the second half of the conversion process – our response to God’s loving initiative of healing.

As we reflect on the reaction of the lepers to God’s healing love, do we run away from God’s invitation to love?  Is there a spiritual awareness to the way we live our lives?  Is there a deep gratitude to all the people of our lives?  Do we trust in God’s presence in the joys and the fears of our life?  Do we run away from God in the midst of life’s struggles?

May our response be always be one of gratitude.  This is the deepest meaning of the holiday we celebrate.  May this Thanksgiving be expressive of our daily desire to live with an attitude of gratitude.

It is significant to note in the Gospel passage while all ten were given physical healing from their leprosy, it was only the Samaritan who completed the conversion process and was made whole in his attitude of gratitude. 

I think it can be said with considerable truth that our lives are directed by the stories we choose to dwell on.  On this Thanksgiving Day as you share family stories, what are your personal memories of your family history?  Are your memories characterized by gratitude or ingratitude?  Can you find gratitude even in the midst of the pain and struggle of your story?

Just this past Sunday while at my niece Emily and Josh’s home for dinner, my grandniece Keara was showing her new bedroom.  She was holding me a small statue of Mary.  I asked her who Mary was.  She thought for a moment and said she was a friend of my mom’s.  I thought to myself:  Wow! I am grateful that Mary and Keara’s mom are good friends.

I can remember as a fifth grader at Our Lady of Good Counsel School, as I was training to be an altar boy, my dad taught me the Latin responses for the Prayers at the Foot of the Altar:  Introibo ad altare Dei.  Ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam.  My dad was really proud to see me as an altar boy, and I have a grateful heart to my dad for teaching me in Latin:  “I will go to the altar of God, to God who gives joy to my youth.”  Those words still have meaning as I go to the altar of God, to God who gives joy to my youth.  My memory of my dad’s faith and his desire for me to be an altar boy laid a most beautiful foundation for me in my journey to the priesthood.

May we remember our family stories and our personal faith stories.  They are our truth that helps fashion who we are today.  May we also remember and celebrate stories of God’s love for us that is revealed in the Scriptures.  As St. Paul writes in the second Scripture reading, “I give thanks to God always for you and for how you have touched my life.”  The Scriptures reveal the story of God’s unending love for us.

On this Thanksgiving morning, may we as a faith community ask for the grace that our community life will always be marked by a radical gratitude to our loving God.   May we be mindful that Jesus is the great teacher of gratitude – grateful for the love of His heavenly father, and he showed that gratitude in his living and dying witnessing to the Father’s love.

Have a blessed day.

What are we doing with the talents that God has given to us?

Today’s scripture readings prepare us for the end of the liturgical year and challenge us to understand our life in terms of its ultimate purpose.  On this the second last Sunday of the liturgical year, our prayer centers around the accountability the Lord will ultimately ask of each of us.  In terms of the Gospel parable of the various talents given to the three servants, we too have been generous recipients of blessings and talents from our loving God.

Our prayerful question is one of accountability.  What are we doing with the talents God has given to us?  Have we buried our talents or have we used them to make a difference in the lives of others?

The second Scripture reading from St Paul tells us the Day of the Lord is coming like a thief in the night.  We know not the day or the hour.   The apostle Paul   told people not to get too worried about end times, but not to get too comfortable either.  What really matters on the Day of the Lord is what we are doing with the graces and talents that have been given to us.

The message is the parable is about trust.  God is entrusting us with God-given talents.  God trusts us.  In turn, we are to trust God in taking the risk and making the commitment to share the talents we have been given in the service of others.  Our precious God-given talents are not ours to keep.  Our talents are not to be buried in the ground.  Rather that are given to us to live out the commandment of love, the first requirement of a disciple of Jesus.

Our talents are not our personal wealth.  These talents are our God-given gifts that are meant to be multiplied and be life-giving for all.  What type of people are we?  Would we describe ourselves as predominantly adventurous or overly cautious?  How creative are we with the talents that God has given us?

We need to get our head around the talents that we have been given.   I invite you to think of talents as what Jesus has given to His Church:  the Gospel, the message of salvation intended to transform the world and create a new humanity; His Spirit who renews the face of the earth, and even Jesus Himself in the Sacraments; and then his power to heal, to comfort, to forgive, to reconcile with God.

These are the talents given to the three servants in helping us understand the meaning of the parable. The three servants are members to of the Church. To each of them is given an assignment to be done so that this wealth of the Lord may be put to good use.  According to one’s own charism, everyone is called to produce love.  Love is, in fact, the gain, the fruit that the Lord wants.

The second part of the parable describes the different behavior of the servants, two are enterprising, dynamic, hardworking, while the third is fearful and insecure.  The first two servants learned to love what the master did.

In the third part of the parable, we witness the rendering of accounts.   The reward the first two servants is the joy of their Lord, the happiness that comes from being in tune with God and His plan.

Then the third servant, despite not being a main actor, appears to be the principal character of the parable.  The central message of the parable is the master’s rebuke of the slothful servant:  the only unacceptable attitude is the disengagement; it is the fear of risk.  He is condemned because he let himself be blocked by fear.

This third servant is held accountable for not sharing the talent of forgiveness, of compassion, of loving those who are difficult to love.  These talents are not to be buried in the ground.  Refusing the trust that he had been given, he buried his master’s offer in the grave.

Our life as a disciple of Jesus can never be just as a spectator; we are to be active participants in sharing our God-given talents in making a difference in the lives of others.  We begin within our own family.  We begin within our own parish community.  But the Gospel call to love demands that we move beyond our comfort zone and bring the message of the healing love of Jesus to one and all.

We are to pray over this parable individually and as the parish community of the Church of the Holy Spirit?

Has the sharing of our talents resulted in candidates for the priesthood, consecrated life as a religious, or the commitment to serve the Church as a lay ecclesial minister?  Who has emerged from our faith community to serve in leadership ministries in our Church?

Has our sharing of our faith and love led others in our neighborhood led others to join and become active participants in our parish community.  Have we increased the number of participants in our Sunday Eucharist?  Have we increased the numbers of those involved in the liturgical ministries?

Are we known in the neighborhood as a welcoming parish, as a family friendly parish?

Pope Francis has declared today to be the World Day of the Poor.  How have as individuals and as a parish community shared our giftedness and talents with those who are in need?  What we have been given, we are given to share.  We are called to wash the feet of God’s poor.  It has been said that for us to enter the kingdom of heaven we need a letter of recommendation from someone who is poor.  Who is going to write that letter for you and who is going to write that letter for me?

Yes, we all live busy lives.  We are consumed by so much stuff to do; we all have our own set of fears and anxieties; we have trouble balancing the priorities of our lives.  The challenge for all of us to place God first in our lives.  It’s too easy to bury our baptismal talent in the midst of a life that is filled with activity from one moment to the next.

And so as we come to the end of this liturgical year and we reflect on the accountability that is asked of each one of us and is asked of us a parish community, may we rejoice in the joy of the blessings of life that we have been given and shared.  May we also hold ourselves accountable that we have not yet finished the work that the Lord has given to do.  The Lord will hold us accountable for how we shared our faith, our compassion, our forgiveness, our welcome, and our love with one and all.

Have a blessed day!

What will the kingdom of heaven be like?

Today’s Gospel is a teaching on “what the kingdom of heaven will be like.”  This biblical expression means the coming of grace into the world, the coming of Christ into our hearts and into our lives.  As the disciples of the Lord Jesus, we are called always to be awake and to be the presence of Jesus among all the people we encounter.

From the Gospel, the sensible bridesmaids kept their lamps burning with the oil from their flasks.  The lamp is the light of love and hope, and at its center is the light of Christ.  This light is given to us in many ways in our lives.  It is the peace of Christ that is within us, and is the hope and love of Christ that we share with others

The spiritual lamp of our lives is following a real, loving person:  it is an invitation to get to know Jesus, and to find ourselves drawn from our hearts to follow Him.  Without this living relationship with Christ, words sound empty.  All the catechesis in the world, all knowledge is incomplete unless our faith is enlivened by our relationship with Jesus.

Initiating last Tuesday, we are engaging in the first phase of our Christ Life initiative.  During the season of Lent, we will be inviting you to participate in seven Monday Evenings with Discovering Christ.  The spiritual renewal we seek is to deepen our relationship with Jesus in all that we say and do.  More information to follow on Christ Life.

What will the Kingdom of Heaven be like?  Our life in Christ Jesus is the way we discover the joy of the kingdom of heaven.

Catholicism is a sinners' Church...Thanks be to God.

What is stunning to me in today’s Scriptures is that Jesus had little trouble with sinners but had his greatest troubles with the religious leaders of his day, religious leaders who were hypocrites.  To pick upon a contemporary expression, Jesus wasn’t concerned about fake news.  He was concerned about fake religion.

In speaking to his followers, Jesus said:  “The scribes and Pharisees have taken their seat on the chair of Moses.  Therefore, do and observe all things whatsoever they tell you, but do not follow their example.  For they preach but they do not practice.  They tie up heavy burdens hard to carry and lay them on people’s shoulder, but they will not lift a finger to move them.”

Of all the evils that Jesus confronted, one of the greatest was the evil of hypocrisy.   The Pharisees and scribes exalted themselves and made their mastery of the law a badge of social privilege.  Worse, they lorded the law over the people. 

Today’s Gospel brings us into the core of Jesus’ moral teaching.  What Jesus demands of the people of the covenant is integrity, being who you say you are, making all your behavior an expression of your beliefs, no matter the cost.

Catholicism down through the centuries has at times been called “the sinners Church.”  Now I ask you thoughtfully:  is this a compliment or an insult to be called a sinners Church.  Did not God our Father in heaven send His Son to us not to condemn us but to save us?  Who better to be in our Church than sinners?  Sinners are the object of God’s saving and redeeming love.  Again, Jesus had little trouble with sinners but had His greatest troubles with his religious leaders of His day, religious leaders who were hypocrites.

Now we have in our parish life 108 of our youth that we are preparing to receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation for the first time on December 9^th.  These youth are beautiful and very much loved and blessed by our forgiving God.  But they are not perfect, don’t you know.  They need to learn to say sorry.  And in so doing, they are the recipients of the merciful love of Jesus.  These mostly second graders become even more beautiful when they can say sorry and humbly ask for forgiveness.

Please God these youth will always be blessed with the gift of humility recognizing they stand in need of the forgiving, healing love of God.  Please God the gift of humility helps all of us to recognize that we all stand in need of the forgiving love of God.

The critique of Jesus to the scribes and Pharisees is that they did not walk their talk.  The question for us:  Do we walk our talk?  This is a question for all of us, not just for preachers.  What is our talk?

It was Jesus’ integrity that allowed him to heal on the Sabbath; he knew that God’s will was for the well-being of people, no matter the cult restrictions.  Integrity led Jesus to the cross because his life meant nothing if he weren’t faithful to His Father. 

What is our standard of integrity?  What is our talk?  We believe the spirit of Jesus is within each of us.  We are made in the image and likeness of God.  As the Body of Christ, we are to be the witnesses of God’s healing love in the lives of people.  We are to love even our enemies.  If we are who we say we are, we have the power to set the world ablaze.

Yes we are sinners.   There is weakness in all of us.  This is why we belong to the Church.  This is why we know that we stand always of the forgiving love of Jesus.

May we always be sinners seeking to be saved.  May we always rely on the power of the Holy Spirit within us.  We don’t preach ourselves.  We preach the power of God’s love that is within us.   In the power of God’s love for us, we have the means to set the world ablaze.

May we never try to be people who we are not. The critique of Jesus was that fake religion is intolerable.  Fake Religion is when in our hypocrisy we pretend we got it all together.  Fake religion is when we do not walk our talk in trusting in Jesus as the center and the North Star of our lives.

Rather than keeping our integrity under a bushel basket, may we follow the example of St Paul who proclaims:  With such affection for you, we were determined to share with you not only the Gospel of God, but our very selves as well.

The apostle Paul preached by the example of his life.  So must we give our very selves in the ways we give witness to the love of God.  We have with us today some volunteers from Shepherd Home, the beautiful hospice here in Penfield, who would be glad to chat with you after Mass in the gathering space as to ways you could become involved in witnessing to God’s with people who are about to go home to God.  Surely the Shepherd Home volunteers are not keeping their integrity under a bushel basket.

Whether being involved in the beautiful ministry at Shepherd Home, whether committing yourself to be involved in our Christ  Life initiative of deepening our relationship with Jesus, whether you simply wish to give thanks to God for the blessings of your family life, may we together with the apostle Paul share the Gospel of God and our very selves with one and all.

Have a Blessed day.