You will be my witnesses!

May 20th, 2012
Ascension of Christ

CNS PHOTO/CROSIERS: A painting at St. Peter and Paul Church in Mauren, Liechtenstein, depicts Christ's ascension.

When we recite the Nicene Creed at Mass, we state our belief in the Ascension of the Lord:

“…He ascended into heaven

and is seated at the right hand of the Father.

He will come again in glory

to judge the living and the dead

and his kingdom will have no end….”

Jesus’ Ascension into heaven might seem remote to us, something hard for us to relate to or understand. Pope Benedict XVI addressed this matter in his epilogue to his second volume on “Jesus of Nazareth.” That book, subtitled, “Holy Week: From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection,” closes with the pope offering a beautiful reflection on the meaning of the Ascension of the Lord.

Pope Benedict writes, “The departing Jesus does not make his way to some distant star. He enters into communion of power and life with the living God, into God’s dominion over space. Hence he has not ‘gone away,’ but now and forever by God’s own power he is present with us and for us.”

With that perspective in mind, our understanding of the Lord’s last words to his disciples and his Ascension into heaven deepens.

The first reading at the Mass for the Ascension of the Lord quotes Jesus telling his disciples “you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses… to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). Then that passage continues, “When he had said this, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him from their sight” (Acts 1:9).

The Gospel reading for that Mass includes Jesus commissioning his disciples to “go into the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15). The Gospel later continues, “So then the Lord Jesus, after he spoke to them, was taken up into heaven and took his seat at the right hand of God” (Mark 16:19).

Jesus’ words in Matthew 28:20, “I am with you always, to the close of the age,” come alive to those with faith in him. With the power of the Holy Spirit, Jesus goes before us always. We can encounter the risen Lord through the word of God, through the Eucharist, through the sacraments, and in each other, as witnesses of the Lord through our acts of love and charity.  Jesus’ great commission to the first disciples is his call to us, to live and share our faith with the world.

The Ascension of the Lord should remind us in a special way of our call to carry out the work of the New Evangelization even when doing so is difficult.  In a culture that is increasingly hostile to the exercise of religious faith, particularly in the public square, the Solemnity of the Ascension reminds us that Christ is with us and goes before us always.  Indeed, when we pray the Rosary, the spiritual fruit of meditation on the Mystery of the Ascension is victory.

As God was with those who first accepted the challenge, ‘You will be my witnesses’ (Acts 1:8), so God is with us as we accept the summons to be witnesses today in all that we say and do.

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Celebrating Communion – For the First Time, and on Every Sunday

May 10th, 2012

This spring, children across the Archdiocese of Washington, including at St. Joseph Parish in Beltsville, receive their First Holy Communion.

Over the next month in parishes across the Archdiocese of Washington, children will be making their First Holy Communion. They will come forward to receive Our Lord – Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity – in the consecrated host and Precious Blood. Often the homily is written and preached for the ears of our young Catholics, and often the simplicity of the homily reminds the adult listeners that we ought never to take for granted the great gift of the Eucharist. Our faith teaches us that what we proclaim in the Eucharist – Christ’s death and resurrection – is also re-presented in that very action by the power of God’s love and goodness. This is the heart of our faith in the sacrament we call the Eucharist, the holy sacrifice of the Mass, the real presence of Christ.

The Eucharist is at the center of the Church’s life. In the celebration of this mystery of faith, Christ himself is present to his people. Rich in symbolism and richer in reality, the Eucharist bears within itself the whole reality of Christ and mediates his saving work to us. In short, when the Church gathers in worship of God and offers the Eucharistic sacrifice, not only is Christ really and truly present under the species of bread and wine, but Christ also continues his saving work of our salvation. Just as, individually, we are brought into union with Christ through our participation in the paschal mystery and our sharing in the Body and Blood of Christ, so the Church as the new people of God comes to be in its celebration of the Eucharist. We are a people made one with Christ and one with each other, precisely in the Eucharist. It is for this reason that the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that “the Eucharist is the efficacious sign and sublime cause of that communion in the divine life and that unity of the People of God by which the Church is kept in being.” In other words, our weekly participation in Mass is essential to our identities as Catholics.

Since we are constituted as God’s family, God’s people – his Church – precisely by our participation in the Eucharist, we cannot grow into Christ’s new body as healthy and full members without sharing in the Eucharistic liturgy. On each Sunday, the faithful come together not only to profess the faith but also to renew the life of Christ within them. We gather not as individuals isolated from each other and related only to God, but as God’s family interrelated to each other and through the Church. We are made one in the Eucharist.

For this reason, the Church calls upon believers to celebrate the great gift of God with us at Mass every Sunday. To absent oneself from the Sunday Eucharist is to diminish one’s own spiritual life – one’s own communion with Christ’s new body, the Church.

We celebrate Eucharist as a faith family – as the Church – on Sunday because it is here that we find our identity, our unity and our very being as members of Christ’s body, members of his Church. Whether or not you know the children making their First Holy Communion in your parish, you have a share in their formation by showing them that Catholics are a family who gather each and every week for the celebration of the Mass.

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May is Mary’s Month

May 4th, 2012

Catholic Standard photo/Michael Hoyt: A mosaic at the Church of the Annunciation in Washington, DC depicts the Holy Family.

During the month of May, we celebrate many Catholic traditions and customs. May processions, the recitation of the rosary, Marian sodality celebrations and seeking the intercession of Mary on Mother’s Day are all part of parish life. Also during May, we celebrate the Feast of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin (May 31). In your family, you may even plant a Mary garden. The tradition of linking Mary and the month of May dates back to medieval times.

Throughout Christian history, devotion to Mary represents and manifests the Christian recognition of the intimacy of the bond between Mary and her son Jesus and her unique and determining role in the unfolding of God’s plan. We Catholics do not worship Mary, but we truly venerate her because she is Mother of Jesus, the Mother of God, the Mother of the Church and our mother.

Gardens in full bloom in the month of May can remind us of the new creation of the world that came through Mary. Mary’s response to the Angel Gabriel, “Behold I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38), sets the stage for all the events that will follow: Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension; the outpouring of the Holy Spirit; the establishment of his Church; and the ongoing work of redemption in which you and I are caught up today by the grace of the Holy Spirit. Mary’s trust in God, her “yes” to following God’s will, is something all of us should emulate.

As the new creation began to take form and as the beginnings of the kingdom of God began to be manifested in a way that would endure century after century, Mary was present. As Blessed John Paul II, in Redemptoris Mater points out, “We see her in the midst of the Apostles in the Upper Room,’prayerfully imploring the gift of the Spirit’” (LG, 8). And he notes that, “at the first dawn of the Church, at the beginning of the long journey through faith which began at Pentecost in Jerusalem, Mary was with all of those who were the seed of the ‘new Israel’” (27.1).

As a mother, Mary brought Christ to the world. As our spiritual mother, she leads us to Jesus. And as the mother of the New Evangelization, she helps us as we lead others to know and love her Son.

Mary, the Mother of Jesus, is the Mother of God because Jesus is God with us. Mary, the Mother of God, is also our mother because we are caught up through the power of the Holy Spirit in adopted sonship with God. She is Mother of the Church, to whom we turn in intercession in asking to become more closely identified with her son – God’s Son – Our Lord and Savior.

This month can be an ideal time to reflect again on Blessed John Paul’s encyclical letter Redemptoris Mater and join the pope in wonder at the  mystery of a God who so loves us that he sent his Son to us so that we might share in his divine life. “At the center of this mystery, in the midst of this wonderment of faith stands Mary” (Redemptoris Mater, 15).

In a special way, every day is Mother’s Day when we turn to Mary and deepen our love for Christ. Mary, who held baby Jesus in the manger and who prayed for him at the foot of the cross, shows us the way to her Son.

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The Feast of Saint Mark the Evangelist

April 25th, 2012
Saint Mark the Evangelist

Catholic Standard photo/Michael Hoyt: A mosaic beneath the dome of St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Washington shows St. Mark the Evangelist, whose feast day is April 25.

Today, we celebrate the Feast of Saint Mark the Evangelist. We join in prayer in a special way with all of the parishioners of St. Mark Church in Hyattsville on their patronal feast day, but it is really a feast for all of us who are followers of Jesus. Just as Mark recounts the stories of how Jesus called people to follow him, Jesus also beckons us. We are not only disciples, we are evangelists.

In the Gospel of Mark, in quite vivid images and stories, we read about how Jesus himself establishes evangelization as the very nature and essence of the Church. Jesus gives his disciples the commission to evangelize, that is, to announce the good news “to all the nations,” and to spread the Gospel by going forth “into the world” and to proclaim the gospel to every creature (Mark 13:10, Mark 16:15). This commission is shared by all those who are baptized, by me, by our priests and by our laity. The laity has a particular responsibility to share in the work of proclamation. At the Second Vatican Council, the Council Fathers wrote, “The laity go forth as powerful proclaimers…announcing Christ by a living testimony, as well as by the spoken word.” (Lumen Gentium, 35).

Today, the Gospel of Mark invites us to ask ourselves, how do we bring others to the Risen Lord? We ask ourselves this question, not in a rhetorical way but with a sense of urgency. Urgency is the word that Pope Benedict XVI used when he visited our archdiocese in April of 2008. He preached, “While it is true that this country is marked by a genuinely religious spirit, the subtle influence of secularism can nevertheless color the way people allow their faith to influence their behavior…only when their faith permeates every aspect of their life do Christians become truly open to the power of the Gospel.” (Homily at Vespers, Basilica of the National Shrine).

The sense of urgency comes not just from our care and concern for people we know whose lives could be changed for the better if they had a relationship with Our Lord or returned to active participation in the church, but also because we live in a culture that is threatening to limit the public expression of faith in our country. Scripture scholars believe that Mark’s Gospel was written to bolster the courage of Jesus’ followers to remain faithful witnesses in the face of persecution, and this message is timely once more.  Actions as small as saying grace when out to dinner in a restaurant, or wearing a religious symbol around our neck or on a lapel are statements of a faith that permeates our daily life.  Engaging in conversation with others about why our faith is so important to us ought to be something we practice so that it becomes a natural part of our conversations.

So many of the people in Mark’s Gospel who were touched by Jesus attracted others to him because people noticed how they were changed by the encounter with him. A life marked by faith expressed in words or in actions has a way of attracting other people to Jesus.  That is the work of the New Evangelization that today’s disciples are called to do, following in the path of St. Mark and the other early disciples who became evangelists by leading others to Christ.

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Our New Life in Christ

April 12th, 2012

During the April 7 Easter Vigil, Cardinal Wuerl welcomed 25 people into full communion with the Catholic Church.

With great solemnity, the Church celebrates baptism and Easter, and along with the Easter Candle, the baptismal font and its water are the central symbols of the Easter season.  On Easter Sunday and each Sunday of the Easter season (the 50 days between Easter and Pentecost), the priest will bless water with these words, “Bless this water which will be sprinkled on us as a memorial of our baptism.  May he help us by his grace to remain faithful to the Spirit we have received.”  The priest will then move through the church, sprinkling the congregation.

Each week we remember again that “…we have been cleansed with water by the power of the living Word, and made sharers in God’s own life and his adopted children” (The Rite of Baptism for Children).  Baptism is both a rising with Christ and a new birth.  Baptism changes us forever.

Saint Augustine introduced the word “character” into Christian theology when speaking about the uniqueness of baptism, which along with confirmation marks us in a distinctive way.  St. John in his vision of heaven sees an angel with “the seal of the living God” (Revelation 7:2), which was to be used in marking the servants of God on their foreheads (Revelation 7:3).  It is Christ who spiritually marks out his own.  We have been claimed for Christ and this is our permanent vocation.  Baptism not only marks us as members of God’s household and children of a new creation; it is also the basis for our own obligations to each other as members of the Church, and the starting point for our efforts to restore Christ’s Church in that unity rooted in one baptism, one faith, and one Lord.

The Easter season invites us to consider how we can live out our baptismal vocation with renewed energy and vigor.  Can the additional practices we added to our prayer life during Lent become a regular part of our daily prayer?  How can we as individuals better fulfill our obligations as members of the Church?  Is this the right time to get involved in an activity or ministry at the parish? Is there someone with whom we have wanted to share our faith or invite to Mass, and is now the time to do that when our Scriptures are filled with the excitement of the disciples of the Lord sharing the good news of Jesus’ resurrection, when our churches are so beautifully decorated and our music so glorious?

Consider how you can bring the “new life” we celebrate at Mass to your world.  Perhaps there’s a part of your life that could be transformed by a renewed sense of hope and confidence that change is possible.

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Christ is Truly Risen, Alleluia!

April 8th, 2012

Stained glass window depicting the Resurrection of Jesus, from the Shrine of the Sacred Heart in Washington.

Just as the disciples did after the first Easter, we too can shout “Alleluia” with joy, because we have encountered the risen Lord. On this Easter, and every day, Jesus is with us, and brings us new life.

We experienced the joy of that new life in Christ in a special way at the Easter Vigils throughout the Archdiocese of Washington, when more than 1,100 women, men and children became full members of the Catholic Church after being baptized and receiving Holy Communion and the Sacrament of Confirmation.  Easter is a time for all of us to reflect on the great blessing that we have received by being invited into the Body of Christ – into his family.

Not long ago, on a very rainy night, I was walking from a meeting to dinner. It was raining so hard, that the street was filling with puddles. One of our group came late to dinner and began to describe how he had been soaked by the spray of a passing car.    He was wet, his suit was dirty and he went back to the hotel to wash up and put on clean clothes so that he would be fit to come to the dinner table with us. In a way this story is a parable about the experience of Baptism and new life in Christ.

In God’s plan we started out neat and clean. Original sin, like the spray of the puddle, tarnishes us.  Like my friend, returning to his room to wash up and change, there is a remedy for us. In Baptism, we have been cleansed and given a new outfit, clothed in the gifts of the Holy Spirit. In the cleansing waters of Baptism and in Confirmation we received a new heart and a new spirit. The gifts of the Spirit make us worthy to come to the table of the Lord.

This new life through the sacraments could only happen in Jesus’ death and resurrection. The Resurrection is meant for you and for me. The words “Christ is risen, Christ is truly risen, Alleluia, Alleluia,” are our words as a result of these sacraments. Not only is Christ risen, but we are risen in him and his new life as part of his new creation.

What joy this brings us!  Like the first disciples, like those who became members of the Catholic Church at the Easter Vigil, we have encountered the risen Christ, and we will never be the same. That is why Easter is a day of such great, overwhelming joy. Jesus is risen from the dead and remains near to us. We share a new life in Christ, and we are called to share his Good News. And that is why, on this Easter and every day, we can proclaim, “Alleluia!”

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We Stand at the Foot of the Cross

April 6th, 2012

Catholic Standard photo/Michael Hoyt: Mount Calvary Church, Forestville, MD

Catholics all over the world are gathering on this Good Friday to step forward and stand at the foot of the cross. We come to the foot of the cross because we recognize the possibility of our redemption.  In spite of our failures, our sins, our weakness, Jesus not only loves us, but he hung on the cross. He shed his blood unto death for each of us. Today, he invites us, as he always has, to come to his cross and see in it our salvation, our forgiveness, our newness.

What brings you and me to the foot of the cross today is our understanding of who Jesus is and what he accomplished for you and for me as he hung on the cross and died.

The reason you and I can come to the foot of the cross and stand there with Mary and John is because we know that Jesus welcomes us.  He hangs on that cross offering his life to the Father for you and for me.  We are not abstractions.  We are the reason he came and why he gladly took up the cross in the first place.

We stand at the foot of the cross because in it we recognize the sign of God’s love for us, the ransom Christ paid for us and the new life, the new beginning, the fresh start that it signifies for each of us. “Behold, I make all things new” (Rev 21:5). God wants our friendship.  He offers us his.

What can we bring to the foot of the cross? What is it we can offer? What we bring and what we can freely offer today is our love for God, who is so willing to forgive, and our faith in his Son, who purchases that forgiveness for us with his blood. We also bring our sorrow, our contrition and our resolve that as we leave the foot of the cross we will be all the more committed to Jesus, his Gospel, his Church, his challenge today.

Today, Good Friday, we stand at the foot of the cross so that we can, once again, renew in our hearts the meaning of the cross and why Jesus chose to die on it – to   show the incredible depth of God’s love for us, a love so deep it would bring Jesus to the cross and you and me to the foot of the cross.

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Do This in Memory of Me

April 5th, 2012

Catholic Standard photo/Michael Hoyt: A carving beneath the altar at St. Mary Church in Rockville depicts the Last Supper.

Today, Holy Thursday, the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, is a retelling of the story of God’s love, a love for each one of us individually. On Holy Thursday, we hear the story of the Passover meal in the Book of Exodus and then, in the first letter of Paul to the Corinthians, how in that context, centuries later, Jesus established the new memorial at the Last Supper.

In the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the relationship of the Last Supper to the events of our redemption is made explicit in the account of the institution of the Eucharist. “Do this in memory of me,” Jesus announces.

As we approach the altar of the Lord, we also rejoice in the recognition that God loves each one of us.

The great devotion we have for and exceptional care we show the Blessed Sacrament comes out of our profound faith that Jesus Christ is truly present, body and blood, soul and divinity after the consecration of the bread and wine.

The Mass of the Lord’s Supper also includes the ceremony of the washing of feet. What brings us to the table of the Lord is our love of the Lord, and what brings us to our knees to wash the feet of others is the recognition that we must see in one another Jesus Christ, and thus love one another.

The washing of the feet, like the Eucharist itself, is intended to help us once again hear the story of God’s love. Jesus washed the feet of his Apostles. This action simply reminds us that God loves each of us and in that love he calls us to love one another.

We are capable of showing love for others in many ways, maybe not as dramatically as washing their feet, but in a way that truly conveys compassion: by a word of forgiveness, by a gesture of welcome, by a sign of caring.

As we approach the altar and step forward to receive the Body and Blood of Christ with a profound act of faith, let us renew in our hearts the realization that Christ who washed the feet of his disciples is present to wash away anything that would keep us from being one with him or hinder us from sharing in the joy of his new and eternal life.

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Our Journey of Faith Begins

April 1st, 2012

CNS photo/Crosiers

Holy Week, beginning with Palm Sunday, invites us to remember who we are as disciples of Jesus and what he has accomplished for us.

Today the narrative of redemption opens with the entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.  Here we are reminded that Jesus proclaims a kingdom that will never end and of which he is Lord.  But we also learn that his kingdom is of the Spirit.  His realm is a spiritual one, not a temporal, political one.  He has come to fashion a new creation that is formed in faith and resides, first, in the hearts of his followers.

We arrive at this Palm Sunday aware that each of us is on our own personal faith journey, our own pilgrimage that we hope leads us through whatever sufferings we endure to the glory of the Easter garden.

Just as they cheered him on his way into Jerusalem, we are asked as well to walk with him as we make our personal renewal of faith.

As Jesus rode into Jerusalem among the cries “Hosanna!” so, too, today does he again enter our lives.  The palm that we carry is a visible sign of faith in what Jesus accomplished for us and our gratitude for our redemption and salvation won for us in the blood of the cross and made present for us today in the Eucharist.

Our annual journey of faith begins today as we see with the lens of faith the mystery and reality of God with us.

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With the Eyes of Faith

March 29th, 2012

Mathis Gothart Grünewald

In the highly acclaimed series Catholicism, Fr. Robert Barron, drawing on the patrimony of Christian art and architecture, suggests to his viewers that this magnificent depiction of Our Lord’s crucifixion by Matthias Grünewald is a picture of joy.  He is right. With the eyes of faith we see the joy of the Son uniting his will to the will of the Father, we see the joy of the Father’s love in sacrificing the life of his Son for the love of the world and we feel a joy well up within our hearts as we come to the realization that this love shared between Father and Son is a love that includes each one of us.

In one of the most familiar and cherished forms of the Way of the Cross, we find this invitation to prayer: “We adore you, O Christ and we praise you.” To which the people reply, “Because by your holy cross you have redeemed the world.” In this brief invitatory and response, Saint Alphonsus Ligouri captures the essence of the article of the creed that proclaims Jesus Christ “suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried.”

There is much more to this statement of faith than the simple recognition that Christ died. If by his cross Christ has not redeemed us, his death would have little meaning. With the eyes of faith, the apostles and all the believers after them gaze on the cross and see much more than just the instrument on which Jesus hung and died.

Jesus’ saving actions are the work of a person who is both God and man. They have, therefore, a superabundant value. The man Jesus Christ, who is God’s true Son, is the only one who could offer the Father a fitting atonement for sin. It is here that we see the immensity of God’s saving mercy. Not only does God save us, but he brings about salvation in a generous way, in a manner that honors the humanity he saves. In Christ, God allows a human being to bring gifts worthy of salvation.

By his cross and resurrection he created a new form of love, a new closeness to God. The Father saved us not only by delivering up his Son for us but also by raising him from the dead (see 1Peter 1:3-5). It is for this reason that we say that the cross of Christ points toward and is fulfilled in the resurrection.

For this reason, it is with joy that we join St. Alphonsus Liguori and many others in proclaiming, “We adore you O Christ and we praise you, because by your holy cross you have redeemed the world.”

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