If you go to the Cathedral Basilica in St. Louis, you will actually be visiting the second largest mosaic in the world; thousands of small pieces of glass depicting the life of Christ adorn the church. When you walk down the center aisle and look to your right, you will see the following passage on the wall: “Christ is not risen, your faith is in vain.”  When I first encountered it, I was confused as the statement was contrary to the faith.  Why was this in the Catholic Cathedral Basilica? It wasn’t until I moved closer toward that side of the church that a very important word was revealed, which had been previously blocked by my field of vision: “If”. This word completes St. Paul’s quote from his first letter to the Corinthians, “If Christ is not risen, your faith is in vain.” 

Every time I walk into that Basilica, I have my own little April Fool’s day!  Christ is not risen – April fools, just kidding, He has risen!  However, what is St. Paul getting at with his rhetorical statement?  He is declaring a necessary need for action. Because Jesus rose from the dead it changes everything. Our faith was never meant to be something idle, or something stagnant. It was never meant to be something that we just acknowledge for one hour a week on Sunday, or even once a year!  It is meant to move our very being to its core!

When you encounter love, do you just sit there?  Or do you respond to it with your whole being?  When someone tells you that they love you, what happens if you say nothing? It becomes very awkward.  Why? … Because encountering truth and love requires a response! 

What do we celebrate this Easter? God’s unconditional love for us: that even in the midst of our sin and death, God conquers both for our sake!  The question is: are we going to sit idle while God professes His love for us, or are we going to respond with our very being, saying a great yes, a great AMEN?

Christ is Risen! Alleluia! Alleluia!

He has risen indeed! Alleluia! Alleluia!

Father Michael

Recently, my fellow priests and I were sharing our experiences of Ordination with some of the men preparing to be ordained deacons. For many of them, the experience of preparing for diaconate was more daunting than preparing for priesthood because this was the first time we made the promises of celibacy, obedience, and praying Liturgy of the Hours. I remembered being relatively calm as I prepared for the diaconate. But as I reflected more after the fact, I remembered that I hadn’t been calm in the months leading up to Ordination.

During my retreat in preparation for Ordination, all my apprehensions about the diaconate came to the surface. I knew my faults better than anyone. How could someone like me become a deacon? When I shared my doubts with the retreat director, he reminded me that there was Someone Who knew me better than I knew myself, and that He was the one calling me to priesthood. I only had myself, with all my sins and wounds, and so I offered that to Him for Ordination.

When we consider Jesus’ Passion, we probably remember His strength and serenity in the face of brutal torture. But in this weekend’s readings, we hear that as Jesus approached death, “he offered prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears.” In the Gospel, Jesus even says, “I am troubled now.” Just as we will see later in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus experiences the human desire to avoid death. In spite of this, He still says yes to His Passion. How can we possibly imitate Him?

Jesus reminds us, “Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit.” As we come face to face with our own individual crosses, we see our fears, our sins, and our weakness, and everything in us cries out to the Father to take it from us.

In this moment, we are faced with the choice to rely on self or to rely on God. When we give into the temptation to rely on self, we reject the Cross because we don’t think we can bear it. But Jesus teaches us to rely on God when He says, “Father, glorify your name.” He places all His trust in the Father’s plan, believing that the Cross is for the salvation of the world, and the Father will save Him from death.

As we confront the cross destined for each one of us, we confront our own inadequacy before it, but we also realize our need to rely on God, believing that it is through the Cross that we will bear fruit, through the Cross we will reach the Resurrection. I’m grateful that I experienced those moments of fear and doubt before my Ordination because they gave me the opportunity to see that it was God Who was calling me to priesthood and to rely on Him rather than myself to bear fruit.

Father Frank

You can find many statistics and studies pointing to the fact that faith in first world countries is in decline. The question “why is this happening?” can be asked. How could the cultures and countries that were instrumental in the spread of the Catholic faith now be lacking in faith? One thing I would propose is that we are going too fast. These countries and peoples, which include us, are not taking time to recollect, reflect, and pray.

Have you ever tried to recall an event that happened suddenly in your life, such as an accident?  Many times, we struggle to put all the details together. Or have you ever tried to capture information while traveling down a highway? If you aren’t giving your complete attention, you will miss all the details as you go by.

In our first reading, in the midst of the sorrow and sadness of being in exile, King Cyrus issues a decree allowing the Jewish people to return to their land and rebuild their temple. Here the Lord is acting through a world leader. As the Jewish people return to rebuild, they still mourn because the new temple would never measure up to the glory of Solomon’s original temple. The people were failing to see God’s hand in it, despite the fact that he had freed them from years of captivity and oppression.

In our second reading, St. Paul asks the people of Ephesus to recall God’s Mercy in Christ. In a way, they had forgotten about it, maybe due to the busyness of their lives. How many times have we been so caught up in our busyness that we fail to recall God’s Mercy in our lives? Do we fail to reflect on what Christ has done for you and me?

Finally, in our Gospel today Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night, a sign that he was searching for the true Light of the World. It was also at a time when there was nobody else around. Nicodemus went to encounter Christ when the world was sleeping; he went to seek him in the silence.  This first encounter would lead to Nicodemus’s conversion, and eventually to his acceptance of Christ’s sacrifice, as he would help bury our Lord’s body after the Crucifixion. 

What can we do to grow in our faith, especially in the season of Lent?  May I encourage us to slow down, take time to recollect, and reflect on the way the Lord has worked, is working, and continues to work in our lives? May we never get too busy to miss the workings of the Lord and his presence in our lives, thanking him for all the good he has done for us.

Father Michael

When I was a little kid, I would watch a show called The Big Comfy Couch, in which most of the adventures took place on the eponymous sofa. One of my favorite segments of the show was the “Ten Second Tidy.” At the end of the show, the characters would clean up the mess they made in ten seconds by comically shoving everything into the couch cushions. Of course, this show influenced how I cleaned as a child.

One day, as we were leaving a friend’s house, my mom said I had to clean up my mess really quickly before we left. “Ten second tidy?” I said. She nodded, probably thinking I meant that I would clean really fast. When we got back home, my mom received a phone call from my friend’s mom. “We can’t find our remote control. Do you have any idea where it might be?” She looked at me for a second and replied, “Have you checked your couch cushions?”

Even now as an adult, I still do not enjoy cleaning, and much of my “tidying” probably still resembles shoving everything out of sight into the couch cushions. During this Lent, we are called to do a kind of “spring cleaning” of our souls. But left to ourselves, our cleaning might look more like a “ten second tidy,” shoving problems out of sight rather than truly removing them from our lives. So how can we truly clean our souls?

In the Gospel, where Jesus makes a whip and drives all the money changers out of the Temple. What does that have to do with us? John gives us a clue: “But he was speaking about the temple of his body.” Jesus refers to His body as a Temple, and because we are joined to His Body through Baptism, St. Paul can call our bodies Temples of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 6:19).

We need to invite Jesus to cleanse the temples of our bodies and souls of any sin. We do this primarily through the Sacrament of Reconciliation, but as we go to receive this sacrament during Lent, we should take Jesus as a model of the attitude we need to have toward sin. He doesn’t allow any of the money changers to remain in the Temple, but drives them completely out. In the same way, we cannot make any compromises with sin, but resolve to drive it completely out of our lives.

This driving out of the money changers isn’t without purpose. The Temple is a place of communion with God, and even more so the Temple of the Body of Christ. So we allow Jesus to cleanse the temples of our souls so that we can enter more deeply into communion with Him, especially through the Holy Eucharist. As we prepare for Easter, let’s remember that going to Confession shouldn’t be a “ten second tidy,” but a true cleansing of our sins so that Jesus can fill us with His Presence.

Father Frank