Lent 4

Readings: 1 Sm 16:1b, 6-7, 10-13a; Eph 5:8-14; Jn 9:1-41

VIDEO

In today’s Gospel we have two sorts of blindness.

There is the blindness that Jesus heals
and the kind that, at least in the story, remains unhealed.
The kind that Jesus heals is that of the man born blind—
physical blindness healed with spittle and mud,
an affliction that becomes the occasion 
for God’s power to be displayed in the work in Jesus.

We’re not told what sort of blindness afflicts this man,
and “blindness” can mean a lot of things.
There is the relatively rare condition of total blindness, 
which prevents one from perceiving 
any light whatsoever.
There is the more common condition
of partial blindness or low vision,
in which one can see some light and shapes,
but one’s activities are extremely restricted
by a lack of sight.
There are also cases of legal blindness:
extreme near- or far-sightedness
that diminishes the capacity to see to the point
where one’s daily activities might be impeded.
We also talk about color-blindness,
which is typically more an inconvenience
than it is a true affliction,
but does reduce one’s capacity
to take in visual information.

Then there is the other sort of blindness
depicted in the story,
the spiritual blindness that cannot be healed 
with mud and spittle.
This spiritual blindness is what keeps the Pharisees
from seeing that Jesus is one sent by God.
It is also what makes the disciples presume
that the affliction of the blind man 
must be a punishment for sin. 
We see it in our first reading as well,
in the inability to see in David the shepherd boy
God’s chosen leader of his people.

Just like physical blindness,
there are different kinds and degrees
of spiritual blindness.
There is total spiritual blindness,
in which one is totally cut off 
from any sense of transcendence,
any sense that there might be something more
than the brute material forces of the universe.
I suspect that, like total physical blindness,
this sort of spiritual blindness is comparatively rare,
found mainly in atheists on the internet
who are running as fast as they can
from the religious belief they were raised with.

More common is something analogous
to partial blindness or low vision:
those who sense that there is some larger reality
but cannot identify what it is,
who might call themselves agnostics,
because they are not sure 
what it is they are perceiving,
and so cannot commit to calling it God.

Then there are those who have the spiritual equivalent
of extreme near- or far-sightedness,
those who feel sure of the reality of God
but who cannot quite bring it into focus,
those whose spiritual lives are shapeless,
who might call themselves 
“spiritual but not religious.”

Finally, there are those whose spiritual vision
is perfect in terms of its clarity and definition,
but it lacks a sense of color and vibrancy,
those whose sense of God does not bring them
the joy that it might if they could perceive
the full spectrum of God’s love for the world. 
I suspect that this might describe many of us:
we can recite the creed without crossing our fingers,
but our faith can feel faded and drab,
we feel like we’re missing something.

“Not as man sees does God see.”
God sees the full spectrum:
the power of the weak,
the wisdom of the foolish,
the blessedness of those who are hungry,
who are poor and meek, 
mourning and persecuted.
We might see more or less clearly,
more or less of the spiritual spectrum,
but even those of us who see best 
by the natural light of reason
are blind by comparison with God.
As Thomas Aquinas puts it, 
what our own ability to see shows us
is something perceived only by a few, 
and after much time and effort, 
and still mixed with many errors.

But thanks be to God Jesus has come
to share with us the light of grace and glory,
God’s own light that 
can take away our blindness,
can shows us a world that we, on our own,
can only imagine and hope for.
Washed in the waters of baptism,
filled with the Spirit,
fed at Christ’s banquet,
we have hope to see as God sees,
to see as the saints see:
a clarity that pierces through the fog of sin
to reveal a world saturated with the colors of grace.
“You were once darkness, 
but now you are light in the Lord.
Live as children of light.”

This is what our catechumens are seeking:
to live a children of the light.
Today, as they go through the rite of Scrutiny,
we pray that they may pass from darkness to light,
that they may be safe from error, doubt, and unbelief,
and that they may come one day to see God face to face.
And as we pray for them,
we ought also to pray for ourselves,
for we too are blind to all that grace can show us,
we too can find our faith grown drab and dull,
we too can lose hope to see God in the light of glory.

As we continue our Lenten pilgrimage
let us pray that God would shed his light upon us all
and that God, who is merciful, might have mercy on us all.

Lent 2

Readings: Genesis 15:5-12, 17-18; Philippians 3:17-4:1; Luke 9:28b-36

I was in Los Angeles the past few days
and for most of the time that I was there
it was cloudy and rainy, 
with highs in the mid-50s.
While I was disappointed to miss out 
on sunny California weather,
the native Californians seemed 
far more disconcerted than I was:
where had the sun gone?
What was this stuff falling from the sky?
Perhaps they felt like Peter, James, and John 
in today’s Gospel: “a cloud came 
and cast a shadow over them,
and they became frightened 
when they entered the cloud.”

But I suspect whatever consternation 
might have been felt by the Angelenos
was minor compared to the disciples
on the Mount of Transfiguration. 
Though the Transfiguration of Jesus
is ultimately about the revelation of divine glory
and the hope it engenders in us,
the path to this glory and hope 
seems to pass through darkness and fear,
for the “exodus” that Jesus speaks of 
with Moses and Elijah
will prove to be his passage 
through suffering and death 
to new life on Easter Morning.
For the disciples, the Transfiguration 
is a moment of realization 
that they are lost in a wilderness
and confronted by the living God.
We hear something similar 
in the account of God’s appearance to Abram:
“As the sun was about to set, a trance fell upon Abram,
and a deep, terrifying darkness enveloped him.”
The promised land and offspring are to come,
but first Abram must sit in fearsome darkness
amid dismembered animals and carrion-eating birds.
On the journey to the land of promise,
divine glory sometimes looks to us
like cloud and darkness and perplexity. 
Pope Leo the Great, 
commenting on the Transfiguration,
says, “The way to rest is through toil,
The way to life is through death.”

Of course, we in the Church 
hear and say these sorts of things all the time,
and sometimes we reduce them to platitudes like
“you’ve got to carry the cross to wear the crown,” or
“God never closes a door without opening a window.”
These kinds of things make sense,
until, that is, you find yourself enshrouded
in a deep terrifying darkness.
You receive a frightening medical diagnosis
and you don’t know what the days and weeks will bring.
The work that gave you meaning and purpose is taken from you
and it is not clear if you will find anything to replace it.
Your beloved parish closes 
and you wonder if you will ever 
find a new spiritual home.
“The way to rest is through toil,
The way to life is through death.”
But now you are forced to ask yourself:
do I really believe this?
Can this really be true?
Is there rest on the other side of toil?
Is there life on the other side of death?

One way to think about Lent 
is that it is a time of God 
training our vision
so that we can glimpse his glory
even within the cloud,
even amid the deep terrifying darkness.
Writing to the Philippians, 
Paul criticizes those for whom,
as he strikingly puts it,
“their God is their stomach.”
That one certainly hits close to home.
How much time do I spend amassing things
that I think will satisfy my deepest cravings?
How many things or achievements do I grasp
in the hope that they will afford me security,
that they will allow me to avoid pain,
that they will keep fear and loss at bay?
But then the cloud descends
and a deep terrifying darkness envelops me
that no thing or achievement can illuminate.

Through practices of prayer, fasting, and charity,
Lent calls us to not let our minds 
be occupied with earthly things.
Not because earthly things are not important,
but because we can see their true value
only in the light of eternity,
only in the light cast by the transfigured Jesus. 
The fear and anxiety and loss that come
from our attachment to earthly things
cannot be magicked away by platitudes 
about crosses and crowns 
and doors and windows;
illness and uncertainty and mourning are real
and we should not pretend that they are not.
But God is more real.
The love of Jesus is more real.
The power of the Spirit is more real.
Lent invites us to loosen our grip
on our fear and anxiety and loss
so that Christ can take all these things 
into his heart,
and carry them with him in his toil
so that we can find rest,
carry them with him through his death
so that we can find life.

It is precisely because 
fear and anxiety and loss are real
that we must place them in the heart of Jesus,
for it is through his toil that we find our rest,
it is through his death that we find our life.
He has entered the cloud 
and the terrifying darkness
so that he can be our light.
Let us allow God this Lent
to bear our burdens
and show us the light of his mercy
so that God in his mercy
might have mercy on us all.

Lent 1

Readings: Deuteronomy 26:4-10; Romans 10:8-13; Luke 4:1-13

Temptation is often a subtle thing.
If it works the way the devil intends,
you may not even know you’re being tempted.
In our Gospel today,
temptation takes a fairly dramatic form:
Satan appearing and speaking directly to Jesus.
Perhaps he knew that Jesus 
would be able to see through any ruse,
and so he thought he might as well 
take a direct approach.
But with us, temptation rarely if ever
takes such an obvious form.

Think about it:
you start out in your life’s work 
with high ideals, firm principles,
and a desire to make the world a better place,
but then there comes the pay raise
or the promotion,
or the recognition,
or the power,
and all you are asked to do
is to lower your ideals just a tad,
to bend your principles just a little,
to make yourself just slightly less
than that person you set out to be
and one day you find
that there is nothing you will not do
to keep your pay or position or notoriety or power,
that your life has become 
only about you and your ambitions.

Or you and your spouse begin life together
promising to love, honor, and cherish
until you are parted by death,
but then comes routine and a bit of boredom
and distractions and other people and things
in which to invest your time,
and one day you find
that those promises you made
seem like something said by someone else,
and you no longer feel bound by your vows,
no longer feel bound
to love or honor or cherish.

Or you have a moment 
of profound certainty that God is real 
and that God’s reign is the pearl of great price 
for which you should give your all,
but then the feeling begins to fade,
and other things—
things good and worthy in themselves—
begin to assert their own claims on your life,
and in the busy hours of your day 
prayer gets crowded out,
and you tell yourself it is enough to make it
two Sundays out of four to Mass,
or you say you don’t really need 
the sacrament of reconciliation,
since you can settle your sins with God yourself,
and one day you find
that you can’t remember the last time
that you took a moment to pray,
or to receive Christ in the sacraments,
or to examine your conscience
and reckon with your sins,
and God seems like a once close friend
with whom you have lost touch.

No drama.
No devil with horns offering you
riches or power or glory
in exchange for you soul.
Just fleeting thoughts 
like water dripping on a stone,
tiny temptations that gradually
wear away your soul.
And one day you will look around
and no longer remember who you were
and what and who you once loved
and why you tried to live a life
that was about something more than yourself.

And the worst part is,
living this diminished life won’t even bother you;
it will seem natural and normal.

Lent is a call to face these temptations
and to return to ourselves,
to rediscover the convictions and desires
with which we set out on our journey,
above all our commitment
to the God we meet in Jesus Christ. 

It is for us what the offering of firstfruits were
for the ancient Israelites.
As described in the book of Deuteronomy,
this was not simply a sacrificial ritual
but the occasion to recall who they were
and who God had been for them:
“we cried to the LORD, the God of our fathers,
and he heard our cry and saw our affliction.”
It was a call to gather themselves 
together once more before the face of God
and bow down in worship and gratitude.

So too for us, 
Lent must be the occasion to recall who we are
by hearing the Word who has drawn near us,
the occasion to confess with our mouths 
that Jesus is Lord
and to believe in our hearts 
that God raised him from the dead,
and to let that Word dwell within us
so that our diminished selves 
might be enlarged.

This might sound dramatic,
but grace is typically no more dramatic 
than temptation is.
If temptation rarely takes the form 
of a horned devil blandishing enticements before us,
grace rarely takes the form 
of a shining angel grasping us by the hand.
Grace too is something that manifests itself
in the everyday events of our journey through life.
It too is like drops of water on a stone:
present in smalls acts of selflessness,
seemingly trivial gestures of love,
stolen moments of prayer,
the day-by-day ordinary life of the Christian,
the week-by-week celebration 
of Christ’s death and resurrection,
the year-by-year return to God in which
we offer small sacrifices with great love.
Rather than wearing away the true self 
that God has called us to be,
these tiny drops of grace 
transform and refresh us,
they make our souls blossom forth in beauty,
the first fruits of the harvest of God’s reign.

Let us pray that God would grant us a holy Lent
in which we turn from temptation
and bow down before the Lord who has loved us,
that the drops of grace would water
the parched land of our souls,
and that God in his mercy
would have mercy on us all.

6th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Jeremiah 17:5-8; 1 Corinthians 15:12, 16-20; Luke 6:17, 20-26

VIDEO

Jesus says a lot of things

in this brief series of blessings and woes.
Some of them are surprising:
the poor possess the kingdom of God;
the hungry will be filled;
the weeping will laugh;
those hated, excluded, and insulted
will receive a great reward.
Some of them are disturbing:
woe to the rich,
whose reward is earthly, not heavenly;
woe to the full,
who will find themselves hungry;
woe to the laughing,
who will find themselves weeping; 
woe to those who are spoken well of,
because this is the sign of a false prophet.

In these few words, Jesus says a lot:
a lot of things that surprise and disturb us,
a lot of things that seem unlikely
in terms of how we think the world works,
and a lot of things that call 
our own lives into question.
Am I one of the poor, the hungry,
the weeping, and the hated,
or am I among the rich and satiated,
the laughing and admired?
How must my life change
in light of all this that Jesus says?

Jesus says a lot of things 
in these few words,
but something he doesn’t say is, 
“I don’t really mean all of this.”
He doesn’t say,
“This doesn’t apply to you.”
He doesn’t say,
“Feel free to ignore this 
if it doesn’t fit in 
with your plans or worldview.”
These blessing and woes 
are given to us by Jesus
to tell us how the world is
when seen from God’s perspective,
and to direct us how to live
in the world as God sees it.

Maybe the reason 
that we try to convince ourselves
that Jesus didn’t mean what he said,
or that it doesn’t apply to us,
or that it is optional
is that we don’t yet see the world
the way that God sees it.
We see a world in which the poor 
are simply losers in the game of life,
the hungry haven’t worked hard enough,
the weeping need to get themselves together,
and the reviled and rejected need to learn 
how to go along to get along in the real world.
Jesus’ words seem to ask us to become
everything that our world tells us to avoid 
and that it blames people for being;
his words ask us to lament being 
everything that our world tells us to desire
and that it praises people for attaining.

But we are often like the ones 
of whom the prophet Jeremiah speaks,
who trust in human beings,
and seek their strength in flesh.
And we are this way
because we don’t see the possibilities
that Jesus has unleashed in the world
through his life and his death
and, above all, his resurrection.

St. Paul writes to the Corinthians,
“If Christ has not been raised, 
your faith is vain.”
The blessing and woes 
that Jesus lays before us
only make sense in a world 
in which the dead do not stay dead.
To see the world 
through Jesus’s resurrection—
to see the world with Easter eyes—
is to see a world in which 
the rejected are raised.
It is to see a world in which 
the poor and the hungry and the weeping
have hope in God for food and consolation,
for the kingdom is now 
already appearing among us.
The resurrection of Jesus 
is like an underground stream
that has burst through 
to the surface of the earth
to sweep away the old world
of riches and luxuries,
of shallow joys and hollow praise,
to water the dry land of our hearts,
carving new channels of grace.

St. Paul writes,
“If for this life only we have hoped in Christ,
we are the most pitiable people of all.”
Commenting on Paul’s words,
the theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar wrote,
“Belief in the resurrection is a high-stakes game 
in which the player has bet the bank 
and, if there is no resurrection, loses.” 
If we listen to the words of Jesus
about those who are 
poor and hungry,
weeping and despised,
and he turns out to be 
just one more good man
who has gone down 
into death’s darkness,
then the world is right to pity 
our foolishness and weakness.
But if “Christ has been raised from the dead,
the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep,”
then our foolishness is wisdom
and our weakness is power.

So in the end, it comes down to this:
do you believe that Jesus Christ is alive?
Do you hear in his blessings and woes
not a voice from the distant past
that echoes faintly down the ages 
in the memory of his followers,
but the living voice of the one
who is calling you from death to life?
Do you hear the voice of one
calling you forth from the tomb
of riches and self-satisfaction,
of shallow joy and empty glory?
Do you hear his voice this day
ringing in your ears 
as it rang in the ears of his disciples,
calling you to follow him 
on a journey whose destination 
you cannot see,
but which faith tells you 
ends in the mystery 
of God’s eternal love?

Hear the Good News:
Jesus is alive
and he is calling you to follow him:
from death to life,
from woe to blessing.
Let us pray for the grace
to answer that call,
and that God, in his mercy,
might have mercy on us all.

5th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Isaiah 6:1-2a, 3-8; 1 Corinthians 15:1-11; Luke 5:1-11

In today’s Gospel Jesus is teaching 
the crowds by lake Gennesaret,
but the only words of his that are recorded
are those addressed to Simon Peter,
which are in each case
prefaced with a command:
“Put out into deep water”
and “Do not be afraid.”
These two commands 
pretty much sum up the Gospel.

“Put out into deep water.”

Put out into the deep water 
of seeing the universe 
and your existence in it 
as a sheer gift given out of love
by the all-powerful God,
before whom the angels worship, 
crying “Holy, holy, holy…”

Put out into the deep water 
of looking within your own heart 
and seeing there the crack 
that runs through everything,
the broken self that sin has made,
the self that, confronted by the all-holy God
can only say, like Simon,
“Depart from me, Lord, for I am sinful,”
can only say, like Isaiah,
“Woe is me, I am doomed!
For I am one with unclean lips.”

Put out into the deep water
of believing that though you have toiled 
through long hours of darkness
it just might be worth 
lowering your nets one more time,
giving the depths one more chance,
because this Jesus who commands you
just might be the one
who can heal that crack in everything;
this Jesus just might be the one
who can fill your empty nets
with food that endures to eternal life,
food that strains your nets
and swamps your boats;
this Jesus just might be the one
who is a window in our world 
through which streams a glory
that will shake the doorframes 
of our temples.

“Do not be afraid.”

Do not be afraid 
that your broken self is beyond repair,
that your unclean lips are beyond cleansing,
that your frail humanity with be swept away 
in the deep waters of God’s glory.

Do not be afraid
to say, “Lord I am not worthy,”
to lay before the Lord 
ugly truths about yourself:
how constricted sin has made your heart,
how your lips have been contaminated
by words of spite and discouragement,
criticism and gossip.
For God is a consuming fire 
whose angel comes bearing 
the glowing ember of God’s love,
to cleanse you and make you worthy:
“by the grace of God, 
I am what I am.”

Do not be afraid
to let him fill your nets to the point of breaking,
to let his glory flood the temple of your heart
until it feels as if it might be torn apart,
for this glory is the love of Christ, 
the very force that brought the universe to birth,
the grace of God that will dilate your heart 
so that it might take in more light. 

Do not be afraid
to answer his call,
to say, “Here I am; send me,”
to leave behind everything to follow him.
For Christ died for your sins
in accordance with the Scriptures;
he was buried for you
in the deep waters of death,
and on the third day 
he was raised to life,
trampling down death by death
and bestowing life on you, 
who were held in death’s grasp.
And he appeared 
to Simon Peter and the apostles,
just as he had come to them 
by the waters of Gennesaret,
calling them again to follow him 
and to feed his sheep.
He appeared to Paul as well,
persecutor of the church
and least of the apostles,
calling him to let God’s grace 
toil within him
as he preached God’s word.
And he has appeared even to us, 
as to those born out of time:
appeared in his word 
and in his sacraments,
in the hungry and the thirsty,
the stranger and the naked,
the sick and the imprisoned.
And he says to us 
what he said to Isaiah,
what he said to Simon,
what he said to Paul:
follow me in faith not fear;
follow me into deep waters.

This is the gospel that we have received 
and in which we also stand:
“Put out into deep water.”
“Do not be afraid.”
Let us receive the good news,
and, having received it,
let us believe it;
and, having believed it,
let us hand it on to others
so that God, in his mercy,
might have mercy on us all.

2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Reading: Isaiah 62:1-5; 1 Corinthians 12:4-11; John 2:1-11

VIDEO

I didn’t much like being engaged.
Don’t get me wrong:
I was thrilled at the prospect
of Maureen becoming my wife.
And it wasn’t even that I disliked having to make 
all the preparations necessary for the wedding
(particularly since I skipped off to Germany
for the last couple of months before the event,
leaving Maureen, as usual,  
to do the final heavy lifting).
What I disliked 
was that we had decided to marry
and the hour of our wedding had been set—
an hour that I was awaiting
with equal parts anticipation and anxiety—
and yet nothing that I could do
would speed up its arrival.
If anything, my anticipation and anxiety 
seemed to make time pass more slowly.

I imagine that couple 
whose wedding took place
at Cana of Galilee many years ago
felt the same way:
they too awaited that hour
with anticipation and anxiety,
making their plans 
and gathering their goods
(apparently not enough, 
at least when it came to the wine),
and yet unable to do the one thing
that they would most like to do:
speed the arrival of that hour
and so be freed 
of their anxious anticipation.

But they were not the only ones 
awaiting an hour.
Jesus too speaks of “my hour,”
which “has not yet come.”
In John’s Gospel, Jesus speaks 
again and again of his appointed hour: 
the hour when the Father glorifies the Son
so that the Son may glorify the Father (17:1);
the hour for him “to depart from this world 
and go to the Father” (13:1);
the hour of his dying and rising.
Like someone anxiously awaiting his wedding day,
it seems that Jesus too must suffer the passage of time,
must be subjected to time’s slow passage 
as he waits for the appointed hour.
In Luke’s Gospel (12:49-50) Jesus says,
“I have come to set the earth on fire, 
and how I wish it were already blazing!
There is a baptism with which I must be baptized, 
and how great is my anguish until it is accomplished!”
Events are in motion;
Jesus is moving toward his hour;
but only at the pace that time will allow.

But is he not the eternal Word of the Father,
without whom nothing was made?
Is he not the one who, 
in the beginning, 
created time itself?
We pray in one of our eucharistic Prefaces,
“you laid the foundations of the world
and have arranged the changing 
of times and seasons.”
In his creating Word, God has decreed
the unfolding of our lives 
over the course of time:
this is a condition of being a creature
subject to God’s providence.
But surely the Word, who contains 
every instant of time enfolded within himself,
does not need to wait for time to unfold,
does not need to wait for his hour to arrive. 

He does not need to, but he chooses to.
This is the mystery we have just celebrated
in the joyful Christmas season,
but which we continue to celebrate
in the slowly unfolding 
of the ordinary time of our lives. 
The God who arranges 
the changing of times and season
wills to become subject 
to the times he has arranged;
the timeless Word of God 
joins us in our waiting 
for what time will bring,
joins us in our journey to our hour.

God in Christ inhabits time.
But Jesus inhabits time differently from us.
For us, the slow journey to our hour
can become a time of frustration,
as anticipation lapses into anguished anxiety.
Time masters us and makes us its slave 
as we try to master it and control its flow.
But Jesus is not enslaved by time,
because he embraces this journey
to his hour that is to come
as the mission that has been 
given to him by his Father.
For this reason, 
even in the midst 
of anguish and anxiety, 
his journey to the hour 
when he will be glorified 
in cross and resurrection
becomes itself the time
for God’s glory to manifest itself.
The glory of the hour he awaits
seeps into the passage of time itself
and transforms it.
His hour has not yet come,
but in the signs and wonders that he works 
we begin to catch the light of eternal glory.

Jesus inhabits time differently from us,
and he invites us to let 
the shining forth of his glory
transform the way 
that we inhabit time
into something like the way
that he inhabits time.

As St. Paul writes to the Thessalonians,

“God has called us through the Gospel

to possess the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Christ invites us to embrace 

in the ordinary unfolding of our lives
the mission that we have been given in him,
the mission that is unique to each one of us,
according to the gifts 
that the one Spirit has given to us.
To embrace our lives as divine mission
is to be freed from time’s slavery,
to be freed from anxious anticipation
of what might come,
and to enjoy even now 
some share in that glory
that we call life eternal.

This freedom is offered to us 
freely in Christ;
let us pray that we will have the grace
to receive the gift of his glory,
so that our time might be redeemed
and that God, who is merciful,
might have mercy on us all.

Baptism of the Lord

Preached at the Basilica of the Assumption, Baltimore Maryland.

Readings: Isaiah  40:1-5, 9-11; Titus 2:11-14; 3:4-7; Luke 3:15-16, 21-22

St. Paul writes, “Beloved,
the grace of God has appeared…”
There is a certain kind 
of confusion concerning grace 
that we Christians can fall into,
a tendency to think of the appearing of grace
as a kind of supplemental help from God
popping up unexpectedly in our lives,
allowing us to overcome particular challenges.
We can think of grace sort of like 
a power-up in a video game:
something you come across 
that bolsters your powers 
so you can get past an obstacle,
like the Super Mushroom 

in Mario Brothers.

We might think that we get 
an initial cache of these power-ups
when we get baptized, 
and for us serious players—
for those who want to be able 
to complete the tasks and challenges
necessary to win the game—
it is important to find 
more power-ups along the way.
So we go to Confession 
and we receive the Eucharist,
or we get anointed when sick 
or, if we want to make 
our own power-ups
to share them with others,
maybe even get ordained.

I wouldn’t say that God 
never gives us power-ups—
in fact, the Church even has 
a Latin term for them: gratiae gratis data.
But these are gifts God gives us
for the benefit of the Church as a whole,
not as a means for us to complete the game ourselves.
The problem with the power-up view of grace
is that it can leave Jesus out of the picture
and make us masters of our own destinies:
life is our task to accomplish, 
our race to run, 
our quest to complete.
We are the players who will win the game,
if only we are clever enough to make use
of the Super Mushrooms 
that the game designer has left 
lying around for us.

We have confused notions about grace
because grace is confusing,
and it is confusing to us
because it is something far stranger
than any scheme that we human beings 
could ever imagine.
“The kindness and generous love 
of God our savior appeared,
not because of any righteous deeds 
we had done
but because of his mercy.”
What has appeared is not a Super Mushroom
but kindness and love and mercy
in the form of a person: Jesus Christ.
It has appeared

not because we have discovered
the sacramental power-ups 
that God has built into the game,
but because he who is

kindness and love and mercy
has come searching for us in our lostness
to tell us that our exile is ended
and our guilt has been expiated.
We are confused about grace

because God’s grace 
is something so strange
that we can scarcely fit it 
into how we think the world works,
because we have a hard time imagining
that love could be so freely given.

This great feast of the Baptism of Jesus
offers us occasion to ponder
the strangeness of grace.
John appears, Luke tells us,
“proclaiming a baptism of repentance 
for the forgiveness of sins.”
But why then should Jesus,
the sinless Son of God,
undergo a baptism of repentance?
What is he doing when he enters
the waters of the river Jordan?

Water itself is a powerful symbol.
It represents life and purity,
making things grow 
and cleansing from stain,
promising life and renewal. 
In the book of Exodus, 
God brings forth
life-giving water from the rock;
in John’s Gospel, Jesus says 
that he will give water 
to those who believe, 
which will become in them 
a spring gushing up to eternal life;
and in the book of Revelation
the water of life, bright as crystal, 
flows from the throne 
of God and of the Lamb.

Water is promise, but it is also peril.
This past fall we saw vividly
the perilous power of water
as hurricane Helene swept away
life and livelihood in western North Carolina.
In the creation story, 
God must muscle the waters into obedience, 
containing them within the oceans of the earth
and beyond the dome of the sky;
in the story of Noah and the great flood,
those same waters are unleashed
to purify the earth, but also to destroy it;
and in the Gospels Jesus rebukes the sea
that threatens to swamp the boat of his disciples.

When Jesus enters the waters of the Jordan
he enters into the promise and peril of human life;
he comes searching for us in our joys and our hopes,
in our fears and our anxieties,
he plunges into the waters of our humanity
not to plant a power-up for us to find,
to leave behind some grace that will help us
to navigate the game once he has gone,
but to make of us disciples and friends
who join him on his quest of promise and peril, 
the quest to manifest ever more 
the kindness and generous love of God.

This is why Will and Claire have brought Judah
to the waters of baptism on this morning.
We see all that we hope and all that we fear
perhaps most clearly when we look at our children,
so full of promise and so subject to peril;
and we bring our children for baptism
so that Jesus can meet them in the waters
of promise and peril 
and take them to himself,
so that they might be his own,
they might join him on his quest,
they might become heirs in him 
of hope eternal.

Grace can be confusing 
if we think of it as something we get
rather than someone we meet:
Grace is not a power-up but a person.
In the waters of baptism we meet Jesus
who has come to seek us there
so that we might enter into friendship with him,
not because we are kind or loving or merciful,
but because he is.
He offers himself to us without cost,
for which of us could pay the price 
of so great a gift?

“The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come.’
And let everyone who hears say, ‘Come.’
And let everyone who is thirsty come.
Let anyone who wishes 
take the water of life as a gift.”
And may God, 
who is kind and loving and merciful,
have mercy on us all. 

Epiphany

Preached at the inaugural evening Mass at Corpus Christi Church as it begins a new life as an Oratory of the Basilica of the Assumption.

Readings: Isaiah 60:1-6; Ephesians 3:2-3a, 5-6; Matthew 2:1-12

The story of Christmas is a tale of mystery:
the mystery of the birth of Christ
for us and for our salvation.

In a typical mystery tale, 
the mystery is wrapped up and solved 
once the story has been told.
But the tale of mystery 
that is the Christmas story
is a story still being told and retold, 
and the mystery only grows deeper
with each telling of the story.
Each time our minds run through
the events of the Christmas story—
the annunciation, the visitation, the birth, 
the proclamation of peace to the shepherds,
and the journey of the Magi—
each time our lips repeat the words of this tale,
we discover new mysteries hidden there.
And this is because its mystery
is a theological mystery:
the mystery of the infinite and eternal
force of love that we call God,
a tale of mystery that only ends
in the fulness of God’s reign,
when God will be all in all. 

One facet of the mystery 
that is the story of Christmas
is that it is a story 
not just about the birth of Jesus,
but also about our birth in him,
our birth into his body through grace.
Pope Leo the Great, back in the 5th century,
said, “In adoring the birth of our Savior, 
we find we are celebrating 
the commencement of our own life, 
for the birth of Christ 
is the source of life for Christian folk, 
and the birthday of the Head 
is the birthday of the body”
(Serm. 6 In Nat.).

The birthday of the Head
is the birthday of the body.
These words for me land 
with a particular force
as we are inaugurating a new phase
of life and ministry in this place
dedicated to the Body of Christ, 
Corpus Christi.
Just as the newborn Jesus was,
as the prophet Micah puts it,
one “whose origin is from of old”
so too we are seeking here a new life 
that is somehow something that is not new;
what we are seeking is the life of the Spirit 
that has been lived out in this building
for one-hundred and thirty-four years;
the life of the Spirit that has been lived out 
by Catholic Christians for over two millennia;
the life of the Spirit that came to birth in Bethlehem.
For the birthday of the Head
is the birthday of the body.
The body of Christ took form in Mary’s womb
through the working of the Holy Spirit.
and the body of Christ takes form ever anew
in new times and new places
through the work of that same Spirit.
The story of Christmas 
is the tale of the mystery of Jesus, 
but it is also the tale 
of the mystery that we are,
the story still unfolding 
that will not reach “the end”
until all of Christ’s members 
are gathered into God’s reign.

Today our scriptures focus our attention
on the Magi who come from afar,
bringing their gifts to the newborn Christ.
They come from afar 
not just in terms of where they live,
but in terms of who they are.
For they are Gentiles,
those who live outside of God’s covenant,
who seemingly have not been part 
of that mystery tale of God’s steadfast love
shown to Abraham and his descendants. 
But now, suddenly, here they are,
right in the middle of the story;
as Paul writes to the Ephesians:
“in Christ Jesus you who once were far off 
have become near by the blood of Christ.”
And they come bringing unexpected gifts,
gifts that the Holy Family probably would not
have put on their birth registry—
gold and frankincense and myrrh—
but which, I am sure, 
Mary and Joseph 
gracefully received with thanks.
And the Magi leave having received in turn
an even greater, more mysterious gift:
the epiphany in time and space
of the eternal God.

But the birthday of the Head
is also the birthday of the body,
and the unexpected arrival 
of the gift-bearing Magi
in the midst of the story of Jesus
is a plot-twist that has happened 
again and again 
in the story of Christ’s body.
Who could have foreseen the gifts
that the early Jewish followers of Jesus 
would receive from the Gentiles 
who became inheritors with them
of the covenant story, 
“members of the same body,
and copartners in the promise 
in Christ Jesus through the gospel”?
Who could have foreseen the gifts
of philosophy, literature, art, and music
that Christ’s body has received 
down through the centuries
from the various cultures in which 
it has become incarnate?
And even today, who can foresee the gifts
that the body of Christ receives
from every person emerging newborn 
from the watery womb of baptism,
who becomes part of the mystery tale
that the Holy Spirit is spinning?

At this moment in the history of this place
it is hard not to think of those 
who may be coming from afar—
as far as 409 Cathedral St. or MICA 
or some other exotic land 
we cannot now imagine—
bearing unexpected gifts
that might not be 
what some of us would have asked for,
but which we are bidden 
gracefully to receive with thanks.
It is hard not to wonder 
what they will receive in turn,
as the epiphany of God
happens in this place.
Part of what it means
for the birthday of the Head
to be the birthday of the body,
for the story of our common life
to be grafted onto the story of Jesus,
is that we are now living a mystery tale 
that can only be solved by living through it,
and it can only be lived through
if we have faith that God’s Spirit is with us.

Of course, this is true not simply 
of this particular place 
at this particular moment;
this is true of the whole of our lives.
None of us knows 
any of what the future holds,
except that we can trust 
that what God said
to the ancient Israelites
God says also to us:
“you shall be radiant at what you see,
your heart shall throb and overflow,
for the riches of the sea 
shall be emptied out before you,
the wealth of nations 
shall be brought to you.”
The mystery is unfolding before us;
let us step forward into it 
in faith, hope, and charity,
and pray that God, who is merciful,
will have mercy on us all.