To HEAR is one thing; to UNDERSTAND and BELIEVE what you hear is something else entirely!

 

"But daddy, what happened to the flea?"

(Easter 2022: This homily was given on April 17, 2022 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I. by Fr. Raymond Suriani.  Read Acts 10:34a, 37-43; Colossians 3:1-4; Luke 24:13-35.)

[For the audio version of this homily, click here: Easter 2022]

 

To hear is one thing; to believe and understand what you hear is something else entirely.  Let me make this point clear by sharing with you 3 little anecdotes my sister sent me:

A four-year-old girl was learning to say the Lord’s Prayer.  She had heard her mother say it many, many times.  She finally decided to try it on her own.  She said, “Mommy, listen to this: Our Father who art in heaven hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.  Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us some e-mail.  Amen.”

A father was reading Bible stories to his five-year-old son Billy.  He read, “The man named Lot was warned to take his wife and flee out of the city, but his wife looked back and was turned into a pillar of salt.”  Billy said, “But daddy, what happened to the flea?”

After Mass one Sunday, a little boy said to the pastor, “Father, when I grow up, I’m going to give you lots of money.”  The priest said, “Well, thank you, Tommy—but why?”

“Because daddy says you’re one of the poorest preachers we’ve ever had.”

All three of those children HEARD something, but all three children misunderstood what they heard!  That four-year-old girl’s mother must have been having trouble downloading her e-mail; little Billy didn’t understand that “flee” was a command given to Lot’s wife, not a companion of Lot’s wife; and Tommy thought his dad was making a comment on the size of the pastor’s bank account, not a comment on the pastor’s speaking ability (or lack thereof).

And, by the way, Tommy and his father are NOT parishioners of St. Pius X!

To hear is one thing; to understand what you hear is something else entirely.

Today we hear—over and over again—the glorious proclamation of Easter: “Jesus Christ is risen!  He’s alive.  He has conquered sin and Satan and eternal death!”

We’ve all heard the message many times, right?  But a more important question is: Do we really understand it?  Do we really understand the importance and the meaning of this decisive event in human history?

It’s not a sin to say we don’t, or that we’re struggling with the issue.  After all, not even the disciples understood the resurrection immediately!  Remember the encounter Jesus had with two of them Easter Sunday afternoon on the road to Emmaus?  As they were walking along, Jesus appeared to them in his resurrected body (although the Bible says they were restrained from recognizing him).  They began to converse with our Lord, and very quickly the subject turned to the tragic events of Holy Thursday and Good Friday.  At one point in the discussion, the two disciples say, “We were hoping that [Jesus] was the one who would set Israel free,” indicating that they thought our Lord had somehow failed in his mission.  That, of course, was a gross misunderstanding on their part.  Then they add, “Besides all this, today, the third day since these things happened, some women of our group have just brought us some astonishing news.  They were at the tomb before dawn and failed to find his body, but returned with the tale that they had seen a vision of angels who declared he was alive.”

Jesus responds, “What little sense you have!  How slow you are to believe all that the prophets have announced!  Did not the Messiah have to undergo all this so as to enter into his glory?”

Jesus then gives them a long sermon (longer, by the way, than any sermon Fr. Ray will ever give!), in which he helps them to understand all the prophecies of the Old Testament which predicted his suffering, death and resurrection.

So it’s clear from this story: in spite of the fact that these two disciples had already heard about the resurrection from Mary Magdalene and the other women, prior to their conversation with Jesus, they did not understand it—or even believe it!

The world today is full of those who call themselves “Christians”—and yet, many of these professed followers of Christ also misunderstand the nature and the meaning of what happened on that very first Easter Sunday. 

For example, some think that the resurrection of Jesus was just an experience the apostles had in their minds: something like a dream or a mirage.  I wonder what “Doubting” Thomas would say to that?  Pardon the pun, but no doubt he’d say, “Look, friend, I touched his wounds with my own two hands; it was no dream!  Although in many ways it was a dream come true—for me, and the apostles, and the Blessed Mother, and the other faithful women.”

Some think that the resurrection of Jesus was like the raising of Lazarus from the dead.  Not so!  When Lazarus came back, he returned to THIS mortal, earthly life, and he eventually had to die again!  He was a man who had 2 funerals! 

Jesus rose to a life in which there is no death!

Some think that since Jesus has risen from the dead, heaven is guaranteed for everyone—except maybe a few sordid characters like Hitler and Stalin.  Wrong again.  The resurrection of Jesus means that everyone’s ticket to heaven is bought and paid for in full.  But—as some of us know from experience—you can have a ticket to go somewhere, and never make the trip!  To actually go on the trip you’ve got to pick up the ticket and use it.  Faith and charity, rooted in God’s grace, enable us to obtain and cash-in on our ticket to the kingdom, which has been bought and paid for in full by Jesus.  As our Lord said in Matthew 7: 21, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.” 

Does that mean that Jesus was raised only for good, holy people?  Not at all.  That’s yet another misunderstanding.  He was raised for everyone, and his salvation is offered to everyone—but each of us must reach out for it in freedom and repentance!

It reminds me of the story of a very holy woman I once knew named Annamaria Schmidt.  Annamaria, who was a very good friend of my mother, grew up in what is now the Czech Republic.  She lived through the horrors of World War II, saw the Nazis kill members of her family and close friends, and suffered imprisonment and torture herself .

One day during the war, she came upon a seriously wounded Russian soldier lying in a ditch.  He was very close to death.  At that point she had almost lost her faith (given all she had been through), but this providential encounter renewed it.  After she had wiped his face, and given him a drink of water from her water bottle, this soldier—who had grown up in an atheistic, communist country—said to her, “Can you tell me about the man?”  At first she didn’t know what he meant.  He repeated himself, “Can you tell me about the man?  Many years ago, my grandmother told me that there was a man who had died for me, and who would help me and save me if I called out to him.”  So she told him about “the man” who died and rose—and she baptized him in that ditch just a few seconds before he died.

Jesus was raised from the dead for everyone—even that Russian soldier.  In his dying moments, he reached out for salvation in Baptism.  Some of us have already been baptized, but have committed serious sins which we think cannot be forgiven.  That’s a lie!  Jesus did not rise only for good people; he died and rose to make us good!  All we need to do is make a good confession, and we can begin again!

And finally, there are some who think that the resurrection of Jesus means that he’s now up in heaven and no longer here on earth.  It’s very sad that so many have this particular misunderstanding about the resurrection—because it leads them to miss Mass on Sundays and holy days.  The truth is: the risen, glorified Jesus becomes present to us, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity in the Holy Eucharist at every single Mass.  Pope Pius XII once said, “Jesus Christ [rose and] ascended to heaven, but he never left the earth!”  He was speaking there of the Eucharist. 

And, of course, the Lord is present to us in many other ways as well—if we have the eyes of faith.  As he himself said, “I am with you always, until the end of the world!” (Matthew 28: 20)

To hear is one thing; to understand and believe what you hear is something else.

Lord Jesus, we have heard the glorious proclamation of your victorious rising from the dead.  Give us the grace to understand what we have heard—and to believe it with our whole heart, so that we will joyfully live our Catholic faith on this earth, and someday share your resurrected life forever in heaven.  Amen.

Priests: Flawed, But Not Hopelessly Flawed

 

The real "Fr. Stu"

(Holy Thursday 2022: This homily was given on April 14, 2022 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I., by Fr. Raymond Suriani.  Read Exodus 12:1-14; Psalm 116:12-18; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26; John 13:1-15.)

[For the audio version of this homily, click here: Holy Thursday 2022]

One day many years ago a priest friend of mine sent me a copy of a letter—a fictitious letter—supposedly written to our Lord, giving him the results of personality tests that were done on the twelve Apostles.  The letter reads as follows:

Dear Jesus, son of Joseph,

Thank you for submitting the resumes of the twelve men that you have picked for managerial positions in your new organization.  All of them have taken our battery of tests.  We have run the results through our computer and arranged personal interviews for each one of them with one of our psychologists and vocational aptitude consultants.

It is the staff opinion that most of your nominees are lacking in background and vocational aptitude for your enterprise.  They have no team concept.  Simon Peter is emotionally unstable and given to fits of temper.  Andrew has no qualities for leadership.  The two brothers, James and John, place personal interest above company loyalty.  Thomas shows a skeptical attitude that would tend to undermine morale.  Matthew has been backlisted by the Jerusalem Better Business Bureau.  James, the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddeus definitely have radical leanings and register a high score on the manic-depressive scale.

One of the candidates, however, shows great potential.  He is a man of ability and resourcefulness, meets people well, has a keen business mind, and has contacts in high places.  He is highly motivated and ambitious.  We recommend Judas Iscariot as your controller and right-hand man.

That letter, as I said at the beginning, is fictitious; it’s the product of someone’s very fertile imagination.  But it does reveal, in a somewhat amusing way, an important truth about the apostles (who were, of course the very first priests): they were all flawed in some way.  They were ordinary men who were called and empowered to do extraordinary things—things that other people cannot do.  You know, in a very real sense, we priests are the most powerful people on earth.  Did you realize that?  We can summon God to act, and he acts!  Guaranteed!  We can call upon the Creator of the universe to change bread and wine into the Body and Blood of the Savior of the world and God does it.  We can say the words of absolution over the worst sinner in the world, and God forgives that person.  Immediately!  Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin can’t do that!  Tom Brady and Tiger Woods can’t do that.  But every priest can—by virtue of his ordination.

And yet, at the very same time, every priest is flawed in some way (perhaps in many ways)—just like the original priests were.  That’s why you should pray for priests every day, that they will receive the grace they need to deal with their flaws.  Because even though every priest is a sinner, and every priest is flawed, no priest is hopelessly flawed.  Think, again, of the twelve Apostles.  By the grace of God they dealt with—and in some cases overcame—their personal weaknesses (with the exception, sadly, of Judas).

God chooses people not so much for who they are; rather he chooses them for who he knows they can become.  He chose Peter, for example, not because of Peter’s impulsiveness and hot temper.  Jesus chose Peter for the great leader he knew he could become if he cooperated with God’s grace.

I heard a great quote the other day from Catholic actor Mark Wahlberg.  He said, “God is always looking for flawed people that he can turn into polished gems that will go out and do his will and serve his greater good.” 

He said that specifically in reference to Fr. Stuart Long, who’s the subject of a new movie appropriately called, “Fr. Stu”—which opened in theaters yesterday.  Wahlberg financed the film himself and plays Fr. Stu.

The film is based on the true story of a man from Montana, Stuart Long, who for many years was an agnostic, and who lived a fast and sometimes wild lifestyle in his young adult life.  He dreamed of becoming a professional boxer, and was well on his way to accomplishing that goal until his jaw was shattered in a fight and he had to undergo reconstructive surgery.  That put an end to his boxing career.

He then left Montana and went to L.A. to pursue an acting career.  He was able to get into a few commercials, but that was about it.  He worked as a bouncer for a while, and eventually was hired (believe it or not) to be the manager of a museum in Pasadena, California.  Then one night, as he was riding his motorcycle home from the museum, he was involved in a horrible accident: one car hit him; another ran him over.  He nearly died—but God obviously had other plans for him here on this earth.  

After the accident, he had several religious experiences which led him—with the help and encouragement of his girlfriend—to seek Baptism.  It was after that that he began to think of the priesthood.  (I’m not sure whether his girlfriend ever regretted the fact that she had encouraged him to get baptized.  I hope not!)

Fr. Stu was ordained in Montana in 2007.  But he only served 4 years as a priest.  That’s because he came down with a rare, incurable disease—inclusion body myositis—the symptoms of which are a lot like the symptoms of ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease).  Which means it’s really bad!

But in his 4 short years of ministry, this priest touched a lot of lives—especially the sick and the suffering.  His tough background, his terminal illness—and his strong faith—made him very effective.  In fact, toward the end of his life, when he was living in a nursing home, people would line up outside the door to his room for long periods of time waiting to go to confession to him.  One bishop was quoted as saying that Fr. Stu did more in his 4 years of priesthood than he had done in 40!

If you didn’t before, I’m sure that now you understand Mark Wahlberg’s quote that I mentioned a few minutes ago: “God is always looking for flawed people that he can turn into polished gems that will go out and do his will and serve his greater good.” 

That truth, my brothers and sisters, actually applies to all of us.  We’re all flawed, but none of us is hopelessly flawed.  But this truth applies in a special way, I would say, to priests, who are empowered to act in the person of Christ whenever they celebrate the sacraments.

Tonight we praise God for the 11 flawed men who allowed themselves to be transformed into polished gems for Jesus Christ 2,000 years ago. And we pray for all priests in the Church today, that they, like Fr. Stuart Long, will allow the Lord to transform them in the very same way.

Holy Week: It’s About Priorities

 

(Palm Sunday 2022 (C): This homily was given on April 10, 2022 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I. by Fr. Raymond Suriani.  Read Isaiah 50: 4-7; Psalm 22; Philippians 2: 6-11; Mark 14:1-15:47.)

[For the audio version of this homily, click here: Palm Sunday 2022]

Holy Week is about priorities.  It always has been—and it always will be.  During the very first Holy Week, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Word made flesh, made you his priority.  He made me his priority.  That may be difficult to believe, but it’s true nonetheless.   We would not be born for almost 2,000 years, but, as God, Jesus knew us.  Back in 33AD, he knew us.  He knew what our needs would be in 2022.  He knew what our hopes would be, what our concerns would be—most importantly, he knew our what our sins would be!  He knew the need we would have for forgiveness and salvation, so in perfect obedience to the Father he made us his top priority. 

Now I ask you to think about the motivation of Jesus in doing this.  What did he, personally, get out of it?  What was his reward for making us his number one concern?  Well, we just heard about his reward in this gospel: five gaping holes in his body and a splitting headache.  Here, my brothers and sisters, we see how different we are from God.  Jesus made us his priority out of pure selflessness.   On the other hand, when are we human beings most likely to make Jesus our top priority?  It’s when we need something, isn’t it?  Those are the times when we pray more fervently, and frequently and sincerely.  Those are the moments when Jesus occupies the place in our hearts that he should occupy all the time, not just in moments of crisis.  In other words, we tend to make our Lord number one out of selfishness, not out of selflessness.  

Which brings us to this Holy Week.  During the first Holy Week Jesus made us his priority.  This Holy Week is an opportunity to make him our priority—out of need and out of love—by setting aside extra time (extra quality time) for prayer and reflection and Scripture reading; and by making an extra effort to attend the special liturgies and services here in church, like the Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday (when we commemorate the institution of the Eucharist and the priesthood), and the Stations of the Cross and the celebration of the Lord’s Passion on Good Friday.   

And if we do that this week, who knows?  It may actually have a positive effect on the other 51 weeks of the year, by bringing us into a closer, more intimate relationship with the Lord.  I think it’s interesting and wonderfully ironic (and I’ll leave you with this thought): when Jesus made us his priority, we benefited.  When we make Jesus our priority—for whatever reason, but especially when we do it out of love—we benefit again. 

Which means that in the next seven days we have absolutely nothing to lose, and everything to gain.  May it be a week of great spiritual gains for all of us.

 

The Woman Caught in Adultery: Convicted but not Condemned

 

(Fifth Sunday of Lent (C): This homily was given on April 3, 2022 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I., by Fr. Raymond Suriani.  Read Isaiah 43:16-21; Psalm 126:1-6; Philippians 3:8-14; John 8:1-11.)

[For the audio version of this homily, click here: Fifth Sunday of Lent 2022]

·         To convict.

·         To condemn. 

The distinction between those two verbs is very real, but NOT very well understood!  Which accounts, at least in part, for the common misinterpretation of the gospel story we just heard (the story of the woman who was caught in the act of committing adultery).  It’s the misinterpretation which leads some to believe that Jesus condoned this woman’s sin.  And this is not a new error.  According to Monsignor James Turro, a retired New Testament professor, this misinterpretation was around in the earliest days of Christianity.  Monsignor Turro once wrote the following: “Fear that [this] account of the woman taken in adultery might seem to encourage a laissez-faire attitude [toward sin], or, worse yet, might seem to approve of adultery, prompted some early copyists of the Bible to expunge the narrative from the text.  They simply refused to copy it.” 

Apparently some monks were so concerned that people would misinterpret what Jesus said and did here, that they decided to skip over the story completely when they were copying the Gospel of John.  That’s why the narrative is missing from some early manuscripts of the 4^th Gospel.

This misinterpretation stems from fact that Jesus refuses to condemn the woman. 

After the scribes and Pharisees drift away (probably because Jesus wrote their sins in the sand!), our Lord stands up and he says to her, “Has no one condemned you?”  She replies, “No one, sir.”  To which Jesus responds, “Neither do I condemn you.”

But he still does convict her!—and that’s the essential point which is so often overlooked!  He convicts her of her sin by what he says in the very next line of the text.  And she doesn’t argue the point!  Immediately after our Lord says to her, “Neither do I condemn you,’ he adds the instruction, ‘Go, and from now on do not sin anymore.” 

He calls her action a “sin”—not a mistake, or a foible, or a weakness.  He labels the deed a sin, and commands her not to do it again.

This leads to the obvious question: What exactly is the difference between “convicting” and “condemning”?

Simply put, to convict is to identify or expose a particular sin; to condemn is to say or imply that someone is damned.  During his earthly life, Jesus very often did the first, but he never, ever did the second—as we see evidenced in this gospel.  But Jesus is God—which means that on the Day of Judgment he will do the second.  On the Day of Judgment, he will condemn.  Or, to be a little more accurate, he will ratify the fact that certain people have condemned themselves.

Now—in case you haven’t figured it out yet—you are not God!  And neither am I!  (I’ll bet you’re all very happy about that!)

Consequently, because we are imperfect, fallible human beings, we never have the right to condemn!  Only God is qualified to do that, because only God knows the heart; only God knows how culpable a person is for his or her sins.  We do not—even if we think we do.  A woman with this mindset once came to Fr. John Vianney for confession, and she said, “My husband has not been to Mass or received the sacraments for years.  He has been unfaithful, wicked and unjust.  He has just fallen from a bridge and was drowned—a double death of body and soul!”  Fr. Vianney answered by saying, “Madam, there is a very short distance between the bridge and the water—but it’s that distance which forbids you to judge.”

Biblically speaking, “to judge” means “to condemn.”  We Christians need to be clear about that.  It has nothing to do with calling sin “sin”!  That’s another common misunderstanding!  Many Christians today are deathly afraid of pointing out sin, because they don’t want to be accused of “judging.”  Remember what happened during the Lewinsky scandal in the late 1990s?  Christians said, “The President broke the 6^th commandment,” and his defenders immediately retorted, “Who are you to judge?  Remember, Jesus said, ‘Judge not, lest ye be judged’!” 

But that’s not “judging”!  It’s merely pointing out a fact: He broke the 6^th commandment!  How culpable he was in God’s eyes for that sin is something which no one knows except God himself.  He might have been fully culpable; he might not have been.  But that does not change the fact that his action was objectively sinful, and should be designated as such!   

Remember that the very same Jesus who said, “Judge not,” also said, “If your brother should commit some wrong against you, go and point out his fault.”  Similarly, in Galatians 6, St. Paul says, “If someone is detected in sin, you who live by the spirit should gently set him right.”  Then, in Colossians 3, he says, “Admonish one another.”

Thus, according to Jesus and St. Paul, the experience of being convicted of sin is not a bad thing!  And they indicate that it can happen through human beings!  God can work through us to convict someone else, and he can use someone else to convict us of sin (a far less pleasant experience, to be sure!).

And this is something we should expect to happen whenever God’s Word is preached with power, clarity and conviction!  We should expect to be challenged and convicted—at least from time to time.

One Good Friday afternoon, after Bishop Fulton Sheen had preached on the Seven Last Words of Christ at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City, a woman came into the sacristy and began to curse him violently!  He finally said to her, “Why did you come to this cathedral today?”  She replied, “To steal purses.”  The bishop said, “Did you get any?”  The woman replied, “No.  That second word of yours got me—the word of Christ to the good thief!”

She had been convicted by God through the preaching of Bishop Sheen—and that moment of conviction (as unpleasant as it was for her) proved to be the first step in her eventual conversion to the faith.

No one of us enjoys being convicted.  Our initial tendency is to get angry like that woman did!

But think about it: getting convicted now is much better than being condemned on the Day of Judgment!  Condemnation is final, because it always sends a person to hell.  But every conviction can be easily overturned by an attitude of repentance and by making a good confession.  This means that the experience of being convicted can actually lead us to heaven, if we convert our hearts after being convicted of the sin.

So (as crazy as it may sound) we should all pray to be convicted!

In fact, let our prayer at this Mass be, “Dear Lord, convict me—and convert me—so that I might never be condemned.”