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Omnia Christus est Nobis

With Love beyond all telling

12/19/2020

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             In the past few days, we have examined the virtue of faith; to be able to walk in the darkness – the assurance of things unseen.  We have examined the virtue of hope; the expectation in what God can do, not what we can accomplish.  Today, it is the virtue of love, of charity, which is very different from the love that our world celebrates.

Often times when we think of love we identify the emotion, the feeling of love.  Emotions are spontaneous.  They are morally neutral until we do something with them.  Emotions have everything to do with what we want, what we need, what we expect.  Emotions often have to do with our individual values.  When we make decision based on our emotions, those decision are fundamentally selfish, examining what other people do based on how it affects us. 

Love, true love – the love that is the love of God, the friendship of God – This love grows over time.  We take the focus off of ourselves and onto the other.  It is seeking the good for the other. Decisions based on the virtue of charity are often selfless.  It is about giving to the other. 

Today we celebrate the gift of God’s love; that act of the will in which God seeks to capture us, to entice us.  God gives Himself, God loves us first.  Charity is to give as God gives, always selfless.  “Hail, full of grace,” the angel said.  She had already offered to God the gift of her virginity; the question that she asked the angel would not have made sense otherwise.  She was to give birth to Him who Himself was the fullness of grace and truth.  She herself, would become the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit.  He, whom the world cannot contain, was now found wholly and completely, in her womb.  She, with love beyond all telling; she gives herself even more. 

You have to wonder at how small God becomes for us.  The great mystery of God who is grander, larger than the universe that we can imagine (and we only know a portion of the universe),   Often times at the end of Mass, as I am purifying the chalice, you see these little tiny crumbs, these little tiny crumbs!  And I am in awe that God has become that small again. 

So, what is God doing in your life?  Where is God asking you to give of yourself; to be for others in the way that everything you are about is best for them?     What is God asking of you?  God is asking of you, but do you know what it is?  It is different for each of you.  Where is God asking you to love, to grow, to expand your heart to include all the world, because then we will know the language of love. 

In the Scriptures, the language of the devil is very clear.  It is any action that is “non serviam” – I will not serve.  That is the whole ethos of the devil.  With God it is the complete opposite – Here I am, send me.  Let it be done to me according to your word.  What can I do for you?  Who can I be for you?  Let me open my heart and my life that you may come.  That is the language of love.  That is the language of charity.  It is very, very different from our emotions.  You can see in charity, emotions have no effect on the action of the will because we will give and do, no matter what we are afraid of, no matter how we are in doubt, no matter where we think God has abandoned us – whatever it feels like – it does not matter what we feel, because we have decided to give of ourselves.  The emotions lead us to an unholy trinity: me, myself, and I.  The virtue of charity leads us to the most Holy Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, who gave Themselves completely to us that we might learn to give ourselves to Them and to one another.  

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Rorate Video 2020

12/19/2020

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Rorate 2020

12/19/2020

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Remember Zechariah

12/19/2020

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What is your deepest desire?  What do you long for the most?  What would make you the happiest and would fulfill all your longings and hopes? 

There are many things in our life that grab our attention: a spouse, an education, a job, peace at work and at home.  Yet we must remember that as Christians our deepest desire must be for Jesus and the life of glory with him in heaven.  It is possible we may need to begin to change your priorities.  Today we turn the page to the Gospel of St. Luke and hear the announcement to Zechariah and Elizabeth. Zechariah is fulfilling his duty in the temple as a Jew of a priestly cast.  As priest he is praying for the coming of the Messiah, as a man he is longing for a son.  Both of his prayers are answered.

The Angel bore witness to grace. Zechariah, as priest offering incense is praying for the coming of a Messiah who would be the true sacrificial offering for the world.  The angel beside the altar of incense was a herald of a new Covenant.  Zechariah in the middle of the sanctuary represented the old covenant that had now been struck silent.  Zechariah and Elizabeth are a faithful remnant of Old Israel.  They believed and trusted in God. Yet, they were deeply disappointed.  He had heard the promise of God but he was convinced now of its impossibility.

Faith means we need a new set of eyes.  Faith – the assurances of things unseen.   The lights do not go on; the lights go out and we learn how to walk by faith,  in the dark.  Here in the darkest, coldest time of the year, we begin to sing of a light that never fails. Faith is walking with a certain firmness and strength, even if you don’t know where the next step will lead. 

Are we a lot like Zechariah?  God promises us great things and we think: when? or how? or what?  What was his prayer?    The promise was given; and Zechariah was not optimistic.  There is a basic difference between our optimism and the virtue of hope.  Optimism has everything to do with what we might accomplish.  I’m optimistic that we may be successful.  Hope, on the other hand, is a real confidence in what God is doing, what God is accomplishing. God is given to us in His fullness and we are often unaware of it. 

What is the deepest desire of your heart and when it is promised to you, will you hear it?  Will you believe it?  What is God doing in your life?  What is God accomplishing in your life?  I’m optimistic that all the gifts will be wrapped and the ingredients purchased for a lovely Christmas and a magnificent dinner.  But I am hopeful too. Hopeful too, that we each experience more and more every day what God has, from of old, longed for each of us, wanting to lift us up to Himself.  And indeed, in this gracious Mystery, He will accomplish that very thing.  

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Remember Joseph

12/17/2020

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            I believe you and I think we know what it means to be human. I think we take it for granted.  I believe we think we know what it means to see. Unless there’s a physical impairment: as we get older, macular degeneration, cataracts take hold and our physical sight begins to depart.  But hopefully by that time, our “seeing” has changed. 
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We cannot see spiritual things.  We cannot see the fact that choirs of angels have gathered here around this altar with us to worship the Lord.  We cannot see the saints; all those who have gone before us, who no longer live in space or time, but are present with the Lord in His temple, here, with you.  You cannot see that when the angels sing that great Sanctus - Holy, holy - that they invite us too, that we participate and lend our voices to the angels singing – we cannot see that.  But faith; faith is a different way of seeing.  Faith is seeing differently.  Faith is knowing that we are inside God’s life; that He has given Himself to us.  And seeing differently, then we must live differently.  We put our faith into practice. 
 
No one of us can explain the mystery of His birth.  Remember those names we read yesterday. The Fathers put it this way: “He who made them fathers became their son.  They were made his fathers whose son he was not, but he treated them with favor by becoming their son.”  This is the great mystery -- God investing Himself within a human family.  Today it is Joseph.  Joseph, with his human vision, with his ability to see what was before him, with his awareness of what was right and just - decided to divorce her quietly.  His faith developed a different point of view. He had a vision of something else that was present--that this Child was from God.  And so, by faith, he takes her as his wife. 
 
The great mystery of Christmas is that we become face to face with God.  If God’s majesty was present to us, we would cower in fear aware of our unworthiness.  We would necessarily recognize an inherent contradiction.  But he doesn’t come in glory and power.  He comes rather quietly, in a single woman, and He comes as a baby.  Now, who doesn’t want to pick up a baby?  He wants us to love Him.  No man could have redeemed us from our sin.  No man could have covered our sin.  But this man is also God.  The holy One comes to redeem the wicked.  The sinless One comes to redeem sinner.  The just One comes to redeem the unjust.  The immortal One comes to save the mortal. 
 
Today’s mystery and challenge is to look at the things in our life; the people, places and situations in our life, and now be able to say -- “Now, I see.”  Now we approach these things, not with our human eyes. By faith, we see differently. God has revealed His purpose.  Now can you see?  Think of Joseph, ask Joseph.  Remember Joseph and the difficulty that this presented, the inconvenience.   There are many things in your life that are inconvenient, that are difficult.  We tend to complain and grumble when things become inconvenient, demanding or difficult.  But now, remember Joseph and say – now, I see.
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How to make a good confession

12/17/2020

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Its got to be flesh

12/17/2020

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From a letter of Pope St Leo the Great
The mystery of our reconciliation with God

To speak of our Lord, the son of the Blessed Virgin Mary, as true and perfect man is of no value to us if we do not believe that he is descended from the line of ancestors set out in the Gospel.

    Matthew’s gospel begins by setting out the genealogy of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham, and then traces his human descent by bringing his ancestral line down to his mother’s husband, Joseph. On the other hand, Luke traces his parentage backward step by step to the actual father of mankind, to show that both the first and the last Adam share the same nature.

    No doubt the Son of God in his omnipotence could have taught and sanctified men by appearing to them in a semblance of human form as he did to the patriarchs and prophets, when for instance he engaged in a wrestling contest or entered into conversation with them, or when he accepted their hospitality and even ate the food they set before him. But these appearances were only types, signs that mysteriously foretold the coming of one who would take a true human nature from the stock of the patriarchs who had gone before him. No mere figure, then, fulfilled the mystery of our reconciliation with God, ordained from all eternity. The Holy Spirit had not yet come upon the Virgin nor had the power of the Most High overshadowed her, so that within her spotless womb Wisdom might build itself a house and the Word become flesh. The divine nature and the nature of a servant were to be united in one person so that the Creator of time might be born in time, and he through whom all things were made might be brought forth in their midst.

    For unless the new man, by being made in the likeness of sinful flesh, had taken on himself the nature of our first parents, unless he had stooped to be one in substance with his mother while sharing the Father’s substance and, being alone free from sin, united our nature to his, the whole human race would still be held captive under the dominion of Satan. The Conqueror’s victory would have profited us nothing if the battle had been fought outside our human condition. But through this wonderful blending the mystery of new birth shone upon us, so that through the same Spirit by whom Christ was conceived and brought forth we too might be born again in a spiritual birth; and in consequence the evangelist declares the faithful to have been born not of blood, nor of the desire of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.


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Made Flesh

12/17/2020

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Today, we begin the story of salvation.  It was not so simple. God did not simply appear as if by magic and save us, or just forgive us.  That would not have changed us.  We had to be changed into His likeness.  We would not be transformed unless the battle, the spiritual battle that it would take to redeem us, could take place in our own human flesh. 
God had appeared before.  Jacob had wrestled with the angel.  Abraham had these three strangers in the desert. David, the youngest, was chosen out of his many brothers.  All of these were “types.”  All pre-figured the fact that God would, in His Divinity, take on our humanity and become one with us.  And so, all of these names may seem like just a jumble of stories all lumped together.  But in actual fact, it establishes that Jesus had human ancestors; He was made part of our humanity.  The conqueror’s victory would have had no effect if the battle had taken place outside of our condition. 
 
There is also something rather curious about this rather Jewish genealogy.  It was those five woman: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba, and of course, Mary.  Now the first four:  Tamar, Rahab…there is the little part about them being prostitutes, which is rather unusual.  Ruth enticed and captured Boaz, and Bathsheba was the wife of Uriah.  So there’s that whole situation, and some people believe that part of what God came to redeem was that sinfulness. Really, it has nothing to do with that at all.  All of these women, except for Mary, were Gentiles; they were all pagans.  Now God has invited all the nations into this redemption; it is not just for the Jews. 

Something else about that list of names – about a third of those names are really good people.  They had their foibles.  David is considered one of the good people, but there is the whole story with him and the wife of Uriah, but all in all, David is the king.  So all the good guys had their faults, but they were relatively good guys.  One-third of the names is bad guys.  Ahaz – you heard the story – he is not going to tempt God, but he is going to make an alliance with the pagans to see if he can save Israel that way.   Ahaz trusted in himself and was defeated. The last third of the names are…we have no idea.  So you can be a complete nobody on this list and yet you are an ancestor of the Messiah.  So it does not matter what sin, it does not matter what nation, it does not matter whether you are known or not, whether you are successful or not, it does not matter…none of that matters anymore.  What matters is that you have been chosen by God, redeemed by God, saved by God.  The passion of the human person giving himself to Christ in God – that is what matters now.
 
So the question, the challenge, the invitation for the day is – is God here?  This is where it begins; that whatever you do to the person next to you, you do to God.  The question is: Are you willing to place your body, not just your mind, not just your emotions, not just your spirit, your body in His service. He did not just redeem our heads and minds; He redeems all of us; the glorified body comes with it. – are you willing to place your body in His power and control; are you willing to place your body where He asks you?  Original sin make this difficult for us. Everything seems to be about us and what we want to do, what we accomplish.  With God’s grace we can turn that around. We take up the redemption that turned us back towards Him; it’s not about us at all. 

Life is about what He has accomplished, what He has made of us, how He has redeemed us and invested us with His Divine Nature.  The prayer that we prayed at the very beginning of Mass had everything to do with the prayer that will be repeated again at the altar, prayed silently at ever mass: “By the mystery of this water and wine may we come to share in the divinity of Christ, who humbled himself to share in our humanity.”  And at that moment, the deacon or the priest (if there’s no deacon), places a little bit of water in the wine; Great mystery, that water.  Can you see it?  No, it’s gone, it’s in there, mixed with the wine.  Can you get it out?  No, you cannot.  Where is it, what part of the cup?  No, it is just everywhere now.  That is what He has done to us, His divinity, in our humanity.  That is the reason for this list, this genealogy; that is why we celebrate all our ancestors, because He came to us, to take us, to lift us up out of our sin, to make us His. 
 
So, it has begun, the end of Advent has begun.  The days are approaching when we will celebrate the fact that God has taken flesh and lived among us, hidden in our flesh and gracing us with His goodness, kindness, mercy and love.  It doesn’t matter where we are from or what we have done, or what sin; He gave us the remedy.  It does determine us anymore.  He has just simply made us His own.   

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Gaudete

12/13/2020

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2020 in pictures and text

12/10/2020

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Dear Family and Friends in Christ,
              2020 started out just like any other year.   I’m still settling into my new life in Santa Rosa to some degree and finally, this year, there was a normalcy to it. The year started out with an annual visit to a silly dog and its owners, good friends in Wilsonville, Oregon and then, on to a presbyteral meeting in Benbow, California.  January was rounded out with a retreat at a favorite place, the new Clairvaux monastery in Vina and then, the annual Walk for Life in San Francisco.  You see?  Just a normal month starting out a normal year. NOT!
              February saw the beginning of the renovation of the chapel at the Newman Center. The “chapel” was actually a garage of an old house that had not been well taken care of.  Mass was offered there every Sunday at 6:00 p.m.  I invite you to take a look at the before and after pictures on my blog to truly appreciate the change that has taken place. There were some interruptions along the way, but it became pretty clear that the new school year would see a new chapel that actually looked like a chapel and not a garage!  The renovation included a new wall, new floor, new door and fresh paint.  The whole room was then reoriented and a new/old renewed altar and statues were brought over from the St. Eugene’s Parish Life Center.  The lighting in the room was adjusted as the finishing touch and then, everything shut down.  Thank you, COVID-19.
              That fateful month of the shutdown was March. Just 10 days before everything came to a halt, two of our seminarians were ordained to the priesthood. The two young priests celebrated their first masses as Solemn High Masses in the Extraordinary Form.  The future definitely looks bright!  I will always remember their ordination day as a joyful day for, in addition to welcoming these two good men to the priesthood, I received my Decree of Incardination from the Bishop, making me a full member of the Presbyterate of the Diocese of Santa Rosa.
              Soon after, all masses were suspended and everyone got used to televised masses and Zoom meetings.  This has been the story of life ever since.
              In April, I reflected on the fact that my father’s one hundredth birthday had arrived.  Except for a blog post, this occasion passed by almost unnoticed.  Death is a moment in time, not in eternity.  Dad has been gone for more than 40 years, but he is often remembered in sayings that come out of my mouth that are reminiscent of him.
              Holy Week and Easter were unusual and quiet with the lockdown.  There was still transformation of the church and decorating going on because the masses were being live-streamed.  One of the things that kept things normal for me were the Sisters.  I still went to the Convent every day to celebrate mass and that included some Holy Week services.  Some Triduum services were held in an empty Cathedral, but the best was in the Convent, with a video camera capturing everything.
              Easter dinner was a leg of lamb with tons of garlic, as is traditional, but in the evening, after the dishes were done and the bones placed in a big pot for soup, my next stop was the Emergency Room!  Watching pots is not that interesting, so I nodded off, fell of my chair and cracked open my head.  Five staples later, I was back at home, recuperating.  Welcome to the life of the elderly.  I have fallen two more times in subsequent months, which has taught me that I need to be more careful.
              All of my vacation plans, of course, had to be cancelled because of the pandemic.  Technically speaking, I could have still gone to Italy, but would’ve had to have been quarantined for the first two weeks, so that wasn’t going to happen.  Instead, I paid a visit to the Northern California Redwoods and the coast of Oregon to see that silly dog and my friends.  The vacation ended with a visit to a friend’s cabin in the Klamath National Forest.  All of the pictures, of course, are on my blog.
              Life at the moment is very restful:  Mass at the Convent during the week and mass outside of the Cathedral on Sunday.  I have lots of time for reading and praying.  It’s my fervent hope, though, that this lockdown ends soon and that we can celebrate mass indoors again, that the Newman Center will re-open and that the students will return to campus.
              I have nothing to complain about.  My family Thanksgiving was cancelled due to some family illnesses, but I was able to celebrate with the wonderful Sisters and friends.  Christmas with the family is in doubt due to the fact that my niece and her family will be moving to the Sacramento area, but the Lord is taking very good care of me, providing a home with lots of good friends in Santa Rosa.
              I almost forgot to mention: I ended the year 35 lbs. lighter than I began it.  I am in the best health, blood pressure is normal, and I am surviving with three fewer prescriptions.
              Some of my favorite songs are from Advent time.  They speak of an unspeakable joy awaited; and enrichment celebrated with extravagant joy.  Our God has visited His people.  My prayer for you in this time is that God continues to fill you with His most wonderful gifts. In Christ and in His Blood, we have been redeemed and our sins forgiven, so immeasurably generous is God’s favor to us.  (Eph. 1:7).   Blessed Christmas!


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    Omnia Christus Est Nobis

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    I am a Roman Catholic Priest from California. I spent 13 wonderful years years as a member of the Province of the Pacific in the Missionaries of the Precious Blood. The outline of my life can be traced here. 

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