Nov 27 - First Sunday of Advent

+ I hope that one movie presentation still lives in the hearts and memories of many generations of men, women and children: And the movie is the Rodgers and Hammerstein blockbuster presentation of THE SOUND OF MUSIC. In the production, Mother Superior encourages soul-searching postulant Maria to search for her life, to “climb every mountain ‘til she finds her dream:” until she finds God’s will and is “intent on doing it with all her heart.” This Maria does and finds a life beyond anything she could have imagined.

 

Our first reading today invites us to “climb the Lord’s Mountain” to the heights of Zion – because from there we will hear instruction, and the word of peace that is to be proclaimed to all the nations – and that peace is none other than the coming Prince of Peace, Jesus the Lord.

 

Whenever we come into a church or a chapel we climb the mountain of the Lord – to hear his words of peace and encouragement, to be fed by his spiritual energy in sacramental form, so that we can come back down the mountain, go outside to our neighborhoods and live a changed life – for the good of ourselves, yes, but more importantly for the good of our families and every person we run across on any given day!

 

As we begin, once again,  the Advent season today: let us awake from sleep – let us be attentive to what we do in this place, even moreso this coming liturgical year – for our salvation – the completion of our salvation - is closer than it was last year -  and there is reliable prophetic information that the great Spiritual Reset, inaugurated by Jesus Christ, King of the Universe, whom we honored just last Sunday – may be truly close at hand.

 

Only God the Father knows when he wants us all to join him – in the meantime – let us never cease giving him glory and praise and thanks – in all that we think, say and do in our ordinary activities, because this is what he wants of us and this is what we will be doing when we get there anyway!

 

“How you solve a problem like Maria,” is to set her free to be what God intended for her to be all along; may we search for and find what God intends us to be all along – even before we experience the fullness of it in heaven!

 

Let us go rejoicing to the house of the Lord.

Nov 9 - Ded Bas St John Lateran

 Today we celebrate the feast of the oldest of the four major basilicas of Rome, St. John Lateran – whose official title is the Patriarchal Basilica of the Most Holy Savior and St. John the Baptist at the Lateran. It stands on the site of an ancient palace on the Celian Hill, which formerly belonged to the Laterani family.

 

The Lateran Basilica (not St. Peter’s) - originally known as the Church of Savior - is the pope’s cathedral church, in his primary role as Bishop of Rome. It is considered “the mother and head of all churches of Rome and the world.” Five ecumenical councils were held there (in 1123, 1139, 1179, 1215 and 1512-17). The emperor Constantine received the palace as part of his wife’s dowry and then donated it to the Church about the year 312. Thereafter, it was the official residence of the popes until their departure for Avignon, France, in 1309. This feast commemorates the original dedication of the basilica by Pope Sylvester I on November 9, 324.

 

Any church, cathedral or basilica is meant to be first, last and in all ways, “a house of prayer” – and that according to the desire and formulations of Jesus himself as we see in the gospel passage. They are to be “awesome” places – which stir up a sense of wonder and awe from the most humble and small of expressions to the largest and grandest.

 

 Above all, the faithful that gather there must reflect on the fact that the building they are in represents themselves as spiritual dwelling places for God – they themselves are God’s building, God’s temple, God’s church, with God dwelling in them in a much deeper way than he ever could in a compilation of stone, mortar and glass – beautiful though they may be.

 

And all of our church buildings are to represent and lead us to the most supreme awesome throne of God – where we will dwell in our spiritual home forever in Christ as One Body, One Temple, and One Church forever!

 

The waters of the river gladden the city of God, the holy dwelling of the Most High!

Nov 6 - 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

+ The liturgy, prayers and readings of today are brief and to the point: and their point is this: we do not know when the Lord will come, and so we must be ready all the time! Not the kind of sitting around kind of waiting, but the “keep doing what you have been taught all along” kind of waiting. In a sense it is like a test. Is all of this “Jesus stuff “and religious stuff real or not? If it is then, the final day will not be terrible for those who are faithful and faith-filled; and looking forward in hope to eternal peace with God: they shall not be disappointed. But, as the first reading tells us, those who just don’t want to buy into the program, those who think they know better than Jesus and his religion, those who think they will slip through the cracks and land somehow in the same eternity as everyone else: they are mistaken. There are consequences to our choices regarding Jesus and his Church – and they shall suffer theirs!

 

The terrible persecutions that Christ tells us his followers should expect will lead to one great thing: “to your giving testimony.”

 

That is: the ability to speak a word of Truth, and Contradiction, and Boldness that we do not prepare beforehand, that Jesus himself will give us, and that leave our adversaries powerless to resist is an irrefutable sign of the authority and majesty of Christ.

 

“The day is coming when all the proud and all evildoers will be stubble.”

 

The words of urgency and truth and steadfast boldness of Jesus are what turn the wicked to stubble. Bur for those who fear God’s name, “there will arise the sun of justice with its healing rays.” The Lord Jesus calls us to take very seriously his provident care of us: “Not a hair on your head will be destroyed,” but prepare for it to be blowing in the “winds of change and the coming of the Kingdom in its fullness!” Amen.

Nov 2 - Feast of All Souls

 + Pope Benedict XVI tells us: “I would go so far as to say that if there was no purgatory, then, we would have to invent it, for who would dare say of himself that he was able to stand directly before God. [and I add: “as is” at time of death!]

 

And yet we don’t want to be, to use an image from Scripture, ‘a pot that turned out wrong,’ that has to be thrown away; we want to be able to be “put right.” [or as I could say: “pot right”!]

 

Purgatory basically means that God can put the pieces back together again. That he can cleanse us in such a way that we are able to be with him and can stand there in the fullness of life.

 

Purgatory strips off from one person what is unbearable and from another the inability to bear certain things, so that in each of them a pure heart is revealed, and we can see that we all belong together in one enormous symphony of being.”

 

I, to complement this message from Pope Benedict, have this to add: purgatory is an instantaneous process of becoming fully configured to the Christ of our Baptism, our Confirmation, our Eucharist – so that the deceased enters now fully into the communion of saints in heaven because he is so configured to Christ that the Father sees both Christ and the Person – this is what purgatory is the completion of a transformative process that actually is meant to take place our entire lives.

 

If we cooperate in our transformation through suffering in our lifetime – then our purgatorial process will be brief, if necessary at all.

Another point is that those in the purgatorial state – they cannot pray for themselves any longer – but we can pray for the completion of the process in them – and it counts very much.

 

How many souls will be released into heaven from purgatory by this very mass? It’s up to us, and our intention to free them! So let’s “free away!”

 

“Come, blest of my Father, enter into the joys of the Kingdom prepared for you!”