Transcription coming tomorrow. The Malta M-ettes girls are in the State Class B Basketball Championship, so I’m spending my evening listening to the game on the local radio station. Sorry for the delay!
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The word “stewardship” seems to have become the new buzzword in the Catholic Church. You almost can’t do anything in the Church without hearing about the need to be good stewards, and what Catholic hasn’t had the “Three T’s” drilled into their head (in case you’ve never heard of the Three T’s, they’re Time, Talent, and Treasure).
I don’t want to denigrate the stewardship work being done in the Church. it is necessary for us to be good stewards of he Church, to use our time and talent to build up the Church physically and spiritually, and to use our treasure to fund the temporal needs of the Church. In the discussion of stewardship, I think one aspect is missing: being stewards of the Catholic Faith that has been passed on to us.
Today’s Gospel reading is from the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 21, the parable of the wicked tenants. Focusing on the Gospel, the reflection in the Magnificat Lenten Companion says that “we must be the kind of disciples who are careful stewards of creation and careful stewards of our lives.” As part of being stewards of our lives, are we doing everything we can to be careful stewards of the Catholic Faith? The chief priests and elders were not good stewards of the Jewish Faith, and thus were being criticized by Our Lord.
As Christians, we can fall into the same trap, and I would argue that we have over the past 50 years or so. I’m not going to point fingers and put blame on this person or that idea, but I will say that we haven’t been good stewards of the Catholic Faith. Look at the state of the Church today: a great many Catholics don’t know the basic elements of the Faith, and many don’t even bother to go to Church once a week. At least two generations of Catholics have basically no understanding of what it means to be Catholic. A large number of priests, religious, and laity have erroneous and contrary beliefs to the Truths revealed by Christ, and a number of prominent Catholic laity and religious cause public scandal by repeatedly opposing the bishops and the teachings of the Church. We must seek to do better.
If we wish to be good stewards of the Catholic Faith, we must not focus on how things went wrong and start assigning blame. Understanding what happened in the past is good for the purposes of avoiding the same errors in the future, but it’s all too easy to fall into the “blame game” while trying to justify our actions (or lack thereof). Instead, we need to dedicate ourselves to the task of stewardship. We need to make every effort to learn the Catholic Faith, and to allow the teachings of Christ to influence all areas of our lives. We also need to make every effort to spread the teachings to the next generations of Catholics who don’t know the Faith, to those who are weak in their practice of the Faith, and to those who have not heard the Gospel.
Being a good steward of the Catholic Faith is not an easy task. There will be pushback and arguments. Friendships may be broken, and families divided. We live in a culture that has all but abandoned its Christian roots. If we’re to recover our Faith and bring the world to Christ, we have to be willing to go through that suffering, offering it up in union with the suffering of Our Lord on the Cross. After all, Our Lord didn’t say being a steward would be easy, just that those who are faithful would be rewarded.
Our Gospel today tells us that our Lord “was transfigured before them and his clothes became dazzling white”. This word ‘transfigured’ – from which we also get the Transfiguration, as in the Feast of the Transfiguration – is a change of appearance. It says Our Lord’s appearance changed. He showed to Peter, James and John His full glory. Scripture often talks about God’s glory shining in this world of darkness. We don’t often see that glory because our sight is darkened by sin. Well, Peter, James and John got to see that. It must’ve been a very powerful experience, because Peter wanted to set up tents. He want to stay there. He didn’t understand what was happening, but he knew they needed to remain there nonetheless.
Through the Transfiguration, we are offered a glimpse of the glory of God. It’s a glory that we hope to share in during our eternal reward when we enter into heaven. Because of this, we should seek to be changed, as Our Lord was during the Transfiguration, setting aside our wills and desires, and following Our Lord’s example. We should also follow Abraham’s example, because there’s always a sacrifice in change. We always have to give something up to change. Abraham thought he might have to sacrifice his son, but he trusted in the promise of God, and sought to fulfill God’s will.
We may have to give up things we hold dear. Of course, we always need to give up our sins, because sin keeps us from God. Maybe its activities or behaviors that aren’t sinful, but they get between us and God. For myself, a lot of that is video games. I love playing video games. If I start playing some of the more in-depth video games, I could spend all day. I could just completely waste an entire day playing these video games. Obviously, I can’t do that and devote my life to God. Maybe it’s other people. We may have relationships in our lives that are spiritually unhealthy, and we need to give those up. Whatever we need to give up to follow God is different for each of us. It’s whatever gets between us and God, so we have to decide what is more important: living for eternity in God’s glory, or the passing, Earthly things that can get between us and God.
Abraham was was blessed abundantly due to his faith in God, because Abraham did not withhold anything from Him. We will be blessed if we do not withhold anything that we have. As St. Paul says, “He who did not spare his own son, but handed him over to us all, how will he not also give us everything else along with him?” So the question we should ask ourselves is: what’s holding us back from turning ourselves over to God so that we can receive far more in return? Lent is the time to ask this question. Lent is the time to let go, to trust in God, and to allow Him to change us that we might enter into His glory.
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In the Scriptures, we see the importance of 40 days. The rains that caused the great flood lasted for 40 days. Our Lord remained in the desert for 40 days, and we’ve begun once again our annual 40 days of Lent.
When we look at Our Lord’s time in the desert, it was a time of preparation and purification for his ministry. It was a time to prepare himself to undergo his preaching of the gospel. Lent is a purification and preparation for us to emulate Our Lord by taking these 40 days to prepare to dedicate our lives to Our Lord and to proclaim the Gospel as he did. This is the same as the flood, which was a purification and a preparation of the earth. As St. Peter says, “This prefigured baptism, which saves you now. It is not a removal of dirt from the body but an appeal to God for clear conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” The flood washed away all wickedness and evil on the Earth.
Lent, which we have just entered into, is a time to allow God’s grace to wash away the wickedness and evil in our lives. We do this by using the spiritual gifts such as fasting and abstinence. Fasting a couple of times throughout Lenten season from food and abstaining from certain kinds of food. We do this through spiritual growth by taking advantage of this season to grow spiritually; and of course, we use during this season the sacraments and the sacramentals. Sacraments such as Confession and Eucharist, sacramentals such as a crucifix – especially the beautiful prayer before a crucifix – and holy water. This is why we don’t remove holy water from our fonts. It’s such a powerful sacramental.
We do all this – we use all these gifts, all these tools – because we want to follow Our Lord who wants to lead us to the Father. That’s why He died for our sins: to lead us to the Father. This Lenten season is a time to put our focus back on Him, to refocus on Him, and to head his call. As Our Lord said, “This is the time of fulfillment. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel.”
One thing we must not do if we are to follow Our Lord is allow spiritual complacency in our lives. It’s too easy to fall into that complacency. We all have to be “practicing” Catholics. Sadly, this phrase “practicing Catholic” has kind of become almost a joke politically, because it’s used by those who politically want to deny teachings – a politician or someone who is promoting an agenda that’s contrary to church teaching – and instead want to change the church in their image. They’ll say something like, “Well, I’m a practicing Catholic, and because of that I think the church needs to change this…”
Despite that, we truly do need to practice our faith. We must practice just as a basketball player does. Let me ask you this: it’s tournament time. Everything is going on with the tournaments. Would a coach allow a player to play in one of these tournament games if he skipped practices? If he said, “You know what coach? I don’t need any practice any more. I’m a good ballplayer. I don’t need to go to practice. I don’t need to do these drills. I’m just gonna only play during the game. That’s only time I’m going to touch the ball. Other than that, I don’t need to do it anymore.” Of course not. If the player is lucky, the coach is just going to say, “You’re going to dress out, but you’re not going to play.” More likely the coach is going to say, “Just don’t even bother to put on your uniform.” A good basketball player puts a full effort during practices – puts his full effort towards the drills, towards the shooting, towards the running. A great basketball player does even more practicing after practice, outside of practice. And, on top of that, a great player does exercising, such as hitting the weight room or doing extra running. This is all essential parts of being a great basketball player.
We should desire to be great Catholics. We should practice our faith daily by working out our spiritual life using these spiritual tools which the Church gives us, seeking to get deeper and stronger in our spiritual life. Of course this is all through the grace of God, but this should be our daily goal during the Lenten season. Now is the time to “pick up the ball,” to get deeper into this practice.
We should be seeking to overcome our spiritual complacency, because sadly we live in a culture which really doesn’t demand that we practice our faith. It allows us to drift through our spiritual life. We have no problem doing that, but the question I have for each person here individually – and I want you to think about this – when is the last time you did any spiritual practice? I mean other than coming to Saturday night or Sunday morning mass. When is the last time you came into a church – this church or any other church – and just sat in front of the tabernacle in prayer, silent prayer? When is the last time you prayed a Rosary or other devotion? When is the last time you gathered your family to pray the Our Father – a simple practice that I argue every Catholic family should do every day?
Just as a basketball player needs to practice, we need to practice in our spiritual life. While the high school basketball season is almost done – just a couple more weeks to go – the spiritual season lasts our whole life.
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Homily for the Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Attachment: Letter from Bishop Michael Warfel
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As a trial, I’ve added the WPTouch mobile theme to this blog with the eventual goal of moving over to the paid WPTouch-Pro on both Laudet Dominum and Hi-Line Priest, as well as the parish website. By adding a mobile theme, the blog should look and function much better on smartphones and tablets. Suggestions for other mobile themes are greatly appreciated, especially before I plunk down the $99 Canadian to purchase WPTouch-Pro.
