Our elder brothers and sisters, the people Israel have some very interesting customs.  They have odd dietary laws.  Hasidic Jews wear their hair and beards in certain fashions.  But perhaps a custom that we would do well to mirror has to do with mourning the dead.  They mourn the dead for seven days.  Suring that time they cover mirrors, they serve special food, and at the end they clean out the house uncover the mirrors and life moves on. 

            Can you imagine just for a moment, the priest announcing at the funeral of your loved one, “Rejoice of people of God.  Shout with joy, oh people of Zion.  The time of mourning is over, for your king will come.  He will bring you home.”  At the very least this would catch us off guard.  It would cause us no little discomfort.  We would probably be somewhat offended, “Who does he think he is telling us the time for mourning is over!”  And yet that is what happens in this first reading from Jeremiah.

            The idea of the remnant returning to Israel is not a happy thought.  This is not a time for rejoicing.  This is a time of wailing and gnashing of teeth.  The people of the Lord will be brought low, they will return to the city of their patrimony in shame and diminished.  The throngs of people lead into exile become a band of sorrowful stragglers returning to their home only to find strangers in their homeland and heritage.  This is our story as well.  How many people do you that should be here and are not?  Just as the people Israel recognize that in the joy of coming home, there is great sorrow of those who do not return with them.  We come here with great joy and expectation, and yet at the same time we recognize that we are diminished with the absence of all of our brothers and sisters that share our faith.

            What are we to do?  I think that we have several options some better than others.  We can throw our hands in the air in frustration and desperation.  As people of faith this cannot be our response.  “Bartimaeus be quiet you are embarrassing yourself.”  We can pray.  This is part of the answer.  We must put this concern at the feet of the savior.  Over and over we must call out ever anew, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.”  Sign language has an interesting beginning to each and every prayer, (reach up with the hand to tap above the right side of the head) it is a tapping on the shoulder of God, to get his attention so that He turns His eyes towards us.  Over and over we must call out to our savior to get his attention and then he calls us over and asks, “What do you want from me?  What do you want me to do for you?”  We must respond, “I want to see.”

            “I want to see.”  “Jesus open my eyes, I want to see.”  It is so very important to notice that Jesus uses an intermediary in this healing, “Call him over.”  We as Catholic Christians do this in the transmission of our faith all the time.  Parents baptize their children.  They force their children to come to mass and faith formation.  Wives can pressure their husbands and vise versa.  Parents pray for their adult children to return.  We ask the saints.  We use a go between the Lord Jesus and us all the time, and he does the same.

            In recent years, since perhaps the 60’s there has been an onslaught against the sacrament of marriage, a gradual tearing down of this God ordained institution.  This is not just from outside the Church; Catholics have the same divorce rate as any other denomination.  This insidious disease has come in and sunk its roots into this Sacrament.  Everything that is human has been ordained by God to lead us back to Him. 

            The gift of Marital Love is given to the Sacrament of Marriage.  When I do premarital counseling I ask people why do you want to get married?  The answer, “We love each other.”  I then tell them, Catholic Sacramental Marriage is not about love, it is about commitment before God.”  What you ask?  People who are in Love have been getting married since before there was a Church.  This can’t make it sacramental.  A marriage built only on Love is all about us.  It is about us. 

But a marriage that is sacramental, a Church wedding, is about God.  A Church wedding is about God.  A sacramental marriage is about God.  We love you God, and we feel you have ordained us from the beginning to be together and serve you and your will.  We want to put our lives at the service of You, God, so that You can make us an iconic image of God Himself.  Our marriage is about You, not about us. 

God is Trinity.  Father and Son love each other with such perfection that the Love is a person as well, the Holy Spirit.  Husband and wife love each other and out of their fruitful love a child is born.  Everything that is human has been ordained by God to lead us back to Him.  Marriage is about bringing us deeper in relationship to God. 

Look at the reading from Genesis, God made Adam, and from Adam’s side He fashioned Eve.  Then he presides over their coming together.  “That is why a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two of them become one flesh.”  This action of fruitful love is the Icon of Trinity. 

St. Paul uses this same image of Marriage for the life of Grace.  The Christ lays down His life for the Church.  The Church in her love for Christ follows, and grows in holiness.  From this love the fruitfulness of faith, calls others to join.  This is played out by the truly Christians marriage, St. Paul tells us. 

Marriage is a truly life giving thing.  Here in Christian Marriage is located fruitfulness, not just in children, but also in growing in grace and holiness, spiritually.  Are you growing spiritually?  Perhaps you need to look Christ’s relationship with the Church.

Christ’s love for the Church is fruitful.  Christ’s love for the Church is radical.  Christ’s love for the Church is without end.  Christ’s love for his Church is His very life for us given on the Cross.  What does this mean?  The love of the married couple is fruitful.  The love of the married couple is radical.  The love of the married couple is without end.  The love of husband and wife is their very life given to each other on the cross.

            When I preach I have several themes that I think are of the most importance.  I used to think that preaching the reality of sin and the call to forgiveness was most important.  I still preach about sinfulness and the separation that it causes between our Heavenly Father and the love that He has for His creation.  I like to preach about the great gift of the Cross.  I think that a faith in God that is not rooted in the reality of the gift of the life of the Christ offered for all on the cross is a faith that is weak and has no flavor.  This is a very important theme.

            Since my time at the hospital I have begun to preach on a different theme especially for the weekday masses the two things that I think are missing most in contemporary society; namely gratitude and mercy.  Martin Luther called the Letter of James the “Epistle of Straw.”  Precisely because of the reading we have today.  “What good is it, my brothers and sisters,
if someone says he has faith but does not have works?” I want to look at act of gratitude and mercy as acts rooted and flowing from our faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.

            The art of writing a letter as by and large in this contemporary age of email and text message has been lost.  I love a good letter.  I am sure you do as well.  I like to write letters.  They are not immediate they take time to organize thoughts and wishes in order to share a moment with a friend.  My grandmother died two days after Christmas.  But she sent all of her cards out.  We found out that year that she would send close to 500 Christmas Cards a year she began each July.  The first that she filled out were just generic well wishes.  The majority of people she knew from all over the United States did not know that Christmas that she had cancer, because their letters were written first.  The letters that were to family and close friends started the week of Thanksgiving the same week she found out she had cancer.  The longer letters didn’t get written that year because she waited for her close friends from far away until after Christmas so she could fill them in with all the news from the whole family.  Grandma also wrote tons of thank you notes.  In fact often if one hadn’t come quickly enough she would drop you a note saying that she had taken care of writing your thank you to herself and one was no longer necessary.  Beware the grandchild that didn’t write a note, no presents for the next year.

            Expressing thanks and gratitude are necessary in order to show how much we appreciate the other.  This is most especially the case when we speak of the gift of our salvation.  God has no need for our thanksgiving, but we offer it because it is right and proper.  We offer our thanks for salvation by bringing others into relationship with the Creator.  This is most especially on display during infant baptisms.  We bring the most helpless and weak amongst us and present them to the gift of salvation and promise to grow them into Christians.  Woe the parent who doesn’t raise their child in the faith that they have requested for this little one.

            True mercy is rooted in the love of the other.  Love is sacrifice.  So being merciful is always sacrificial it requires our giving up in order to restore right relationship.  True mercy searches for right relationship in Christ.  Mercy always seeks to heal, to build up, and most importantly to forgive and offer forgiveness. 

During the genocide in Rwanda, the Hutu militants let it be know that they would not slaughter the Tutsi who sought sanctuary in Churches.  The Tutsi gathered in Churches all across Rwanda where they were locked in and shot and sometimes burned alive.  What makes this story most tragic is that Hutu’s and Tutsi’s are both Catholic Christians for the most part.  These Churches have become memorials because the bodies of those murdered there have been left according to their ancient customs of burial.  Here is the story of a woman named Mary who is a Tutsi.  Mary had hidden her family from the killing squads and had gone out looking for food.  Pius is a Hutu, and a member of one of the killing squads, whose leader decided not to kill Mary’s children and extended family.  Pius urged the rest of the killing squad to murder the Tutsi and they hacked them to pieces with machetes, buried them dead and alive, and left.  Mary did not know what happened to her children, were they were killed, were they sold into slavery, or where they were buried. 

After the genocide the bishops of Rwanda commissioned 85,000 catechists to lead small groups on forgiveness.  Pius attended one of these small groups the one that Mary was already a member.  Mary did not know who Pius was or what he had done, but Pius knew her.  During one of these prayer groups Pius told Mary who he was and asked for forgiveness.  Mary went to her hometown to get her remaining family to come with her to kill him.  She arrived late at night, her cousin said stay the night and I will take you to your family in the morning.  Mary’s cousin brought her to one of these Churches still filled with dead bodies, and said, “Here is your family.” 

After visiting her cousin Mary returned to her home and is now the godmother of Pius’s children.  Mary says, “The killing must stop with me.  I have been given the grace of forgiveness by my God and Savior, who am I not to offer the same to my brother.”

            St. Theresa of Calcutta has told us, “We can do no great things; only small things with great love.”  What are the works of gratitude and mercy that have been left undone?  Perhaps they are in your family, your community, even here in this Church.  Let us be people of gratitude and mercy never forgetting that we have received all from the Father in his great gift to us, the life, passion, death, and resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior.

            St. James tells us, “Humbly welcome the Word that has been planted in you and is able to save your souls.”  I would like to look at this in two ways.  First, the Word as the Word of God, Jesus Christ, and second the word as the deposit of Faith given us by God in the revealed word, the Scriptures and the Tradition of the Church.

First, welcoming the Word of God humbly.  We are invited in our baptism into the life of Christ.  We are claimed by Christ even before we can comprehend what this means.  In this indelible stamp of the nature of Christ on our individual human persons, we are changed forever; we are made more human.  This all happens without an impetus from us, it is all grace.  But welcoming Christ, the Word of God humbly, is our response to this grace.  We welcome Christ humbly.  In our relationship with Christ we approach Him as both brother and savior, as both Lord and friend.  This humble welcome of Christ demands a response.  “Be doers of the word and not hearers only, deluding yourselves.”  Be doers of the word, be Christ.  This is our call, and our gift.  This is how we welcome Christ humbly; we act and behave like Him.  What does this mean?  How do we do this?  It is simple read His story.

The second welcoming the Word of God humbly.  In our Christianity we have the story, the Life Story of Christ and His Church.  Are you familiar with The Story?  Does it enliven every single thing that you do?  If it doesn’t, then let it.  If you don’t know the story, then learn it.  You can do it.  If you don’t have a bible, tell me I have a sufficient supply in both English and Spanish.  How can we, “be doers of the word and not hearers only,” if we do not know the word, either Christ or the Scriptures. 

I would like to look at the ways that Christ gives us to do both; they are prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.  Pray.  Pray always.  Pray in as many different ways as you can.  Pray every single day.  St. Therese of Lisieux tells us, “For me, prayer is a surge of the heart; it is a simple look turned toward heaven, it is a cry of recognition and of love, embracing both trial and joy.”  This is prayer, we must pray.  If our lives become prayer, then we are recognized and loved, and we embrace both trail and joy. 

Fasting is a giving up of something for the greater good of the person.  Usually done by giving up food.  Have you ever really been hungry, that feeling of lightheadedness, discomfort, emptiness, and all other things that go without eating.  Fasting is good for us.  There is really no reason in the United States for anyone to go hungry.  There are all kinds of services, I would bet that anyone of you if someone knocked on your door and said that they were hungry you would give them something to eat.  There are places in the world where even the neighbors have no food.  Fasting is an art that has been lost in our daily lives.  Rediscover it.

Almsgiving is the giving of an offering to another who is in need.  I want to look at this in two ways, first, from the idea on the human level.  In Genesis Cain asks God, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”  The response is yes you are.  We are to take care of those who do not have the ability to do so.  In the Acts of the Apostles it tells us that the believers shared all things in common and took for their need not for their want.  The second is in terms of the Church.  Do you give an offering or your leftovers?  In Spanish the words are offrenda and limnosna.  Do you give of your need, or from you want?  These are important questions and if you do not pray about them you will not find a good answer.  My challenge for you is this: do you own a TV?  Do you purchase soda, kool-aid, or beer?  Do you go to the movies?  Do you buy music, CD’s, movies, books?  If you can afford these things you can afford to give an offering instead of your leftovers.

St. Augustine tells us, “Do you want your prayers to be heard, then give them the wings of fasting and almsgiving.”  Fasting, prayer, and almsgiving enables us to be humble, to humbly welcome the Word of God.  Let us be a people humble and welcoming, ready to invite the King of Kings, and paupers, our Lord and our brother He who saves us.

            It is easy to talk about Jesus as a great spiritual teacher.  It is reasonable to call him an inspiring example.  You can even press people to say that he should be the center of our lives.  But the most challenging, that his flesh is true food and his blood is true drink.  This is an image that all protestant churches take with a grain of salt.  Imagine being a Jew of the first century, you have just been told to eat the flesh and drink the blood of this man.  This is not only socially unacceptable, cannibalism; it is also religiously reprehensible.  It is forbidden to drink blood throughout all of the Old Testament.  To eat flesh with blood in it is to eat life and life is God’s concern.  It is expressly forbidden to drink the blood of animals, and so for Jesus to tell them to eat his flesh and drink his blood would be nauseating.

            The Jews quarrel amongst themselves.  They are repulsed they are disgusted.  Jesus brings it one step further.  “Amen, amen, I say to you,
unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you.”  But He uses “trogain” for humans to eat you use the Greek word “fagain,”  “trogain” is how carnivorous animals eat.  You can imagine how lions eat meat they tear at it, they gnaw, it is bloody and messy.  Jesus uses this image, this word.  If Jesus has upset them with the first image of eating His flesh and drinking His blood, He has now utterly repulsed them with the second.

            We as Catholic Christians resist all attempts to soften or make this section more palatable.  We as Catholics hold this as the central tenant of our faith.  We have been invited to eat and drink of the flesh and blood of Christ.  We honor these hard and mysterious words of Jesus.  We hold fast to this doctrine of the Real and True presence.

            We are taught in the documents of the Second Vatican Council that there are many real and true presences of Christ.  Christ is present when the faithful gather.  Christ is present in the scriptures proclaimed.  Christ proclaims the gospel.  Christ is present in the poor and the suffering.  Christ is present in the person of the priest.  Christ is real and present truly in all these ways.

            But when we talk about the Eucharist Christ is qualitatively differently present something more.  Both the Council of Trent and Vatican two teach us that Christ is really, truly and substantially present in the Eucharist in a way that he is not present in the other forms.  Thomas Aquinas says that in all the other sacraments Christ power is operative, but in the Eucharist he says that Christ himself is present.  This is why the Eucharist cannot be just one sign among many.  It can’t just be one devotion among many, one inspiring symbol among many.  Following this and the words of Christ we must say that the Eucharist is the center, the fount, the apex, the very soul of the Church.  Everything that we believe hinges on this universal truth.

Christ himself is present here in the Eucharist.  We all know this it is now news to us, but what prevents us from walking away.  In what way can we be enlightened?  First, in the Eucharistic change, we cannot empirically scientifically explain the Eucharist.  Thomas Aquinas will say that the Eucharist is not a miraculous.   For Thomas a miracle is the appearance of the effect of whose cause is hidden.  The Eucharist has a cause, but the effect remains hidden.  You cannot see the change the bread and wine still look and taste like bread and wine.  In the middle ages again Thomas Aquinas after being told of the Eucharistic species leaving a bloodstain said, “That is puzzling because typically the Blood of Christ leaves a wine stain.”  Quite right.  There is no empirical or scientific change.  But then what happens?

In our Catholic understanding, we talk of the substance changing.  The bread and wine at their very ground of being is completely and utterly changed to the Flesh and Blood of Jesus Christ.  How does this happen?  How do we know it has changed?  Because of Christ’s word.  In the bible the word of God creates. “Let there be light and there was light, let the earth come forth and the earth came forth.  Let the light be separated from the darkness and so it happened.”  What God says is.  God’s word is not just descriptive it is creative.  Since Jesus is God, His words are just as creative.  What Jesus says is.  When he says this is my Body and my Blood, He is changing them at the very substance of their being.  They become his body and blood by the word of His mouth.  From the time of John through two thousand years to today this is the great radical truth that is the center of our being.  This is the center of the church.  We are obliged to hold this great, awesome, and radical faith.  For from it comes our faith, our Church and our hope.