English

2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time  - “Behold, the Lamb of God.”

Several friends of mine in the last week have shared with me their ongoing struggles with life’s difficulties.  They will say something like, “It feels like God doesn’t love me because I am suffering these things.”  We focus on our own problems and see other people without those problems and ask, “Why me?  Why is this happening to me?  Why is God permitting this to happen to me?”  “What is the purpose of it?  I can’t see any good in it.”  Believe me, I have this temptation too as a pastor - to indulge in some self-pity with the challenges of parish life or to be envious of other pastors who seem to be having an easier go about it.  If I don’t see the good in what is happening, does that mean I should leave the situation?  If I can’t fix it, do I quit?  We can have this struggle when we have done nothing wrong - e.g., when we suffer the effects of a natural disaster, are born with a physical or psychological condition that disables us in some way, have a child that is suffering in some way, or we are the victim of the sin of another, but also when we are suffering from our own sinfulness and mistakes.  “Why do I have this weakness?  Why do I keep making the same mistakes or poor choices?”  The questions can be summed up with, “Why do I have this particular cross to bear?”  It is no consolation to say, “well it could be worse” or “at least I don’t have it as bad as that guy.” 

          One of the things I’ve discovered repeatedly in ministry is that a struggle, a loss, or a suffering that I’ve had has become a way to relate to or to connect with someone who is struggling with something similar.  It has allowed me to accompany someone and to speak to someone with a credibility that I would not have otherwise had.  Sometimes it is only in that moment when that suffering or event from the past becomes an opening to share the Good News and help someone who is struggling, that I realize why it happened to me.  “Ah, that was the good in it.  That was the reason for it.”  This is the mystery of redemption and how God is working good out of evil in ways we do not understand and cannot perceive in advance.  Perhaps I’ve learned a lesson from my mistake that I can share with someone who has done something similar and is discouraged.  The suffering I’ve endured has made me more compassionate toward someone struggling with something similar.  If God has transformed my life in some way through a cross that I carried, I’ve been able to be a witness to hope for someone in the midst of the same cross.  Support groups work in this way.  Not only is helpful to discover that I’m not the only one with this struggle, but we are given strength by the witness of someone who has survived and even thrived precisely by accepting the suffering they’ve endured.  Their witness encourages us to stay on the road - to keep following the path, to not give up. 

          Recently, I watched the interview that Bishop Barron did with the actor Shia LaBeouf.  I was not familiar with the actor, but heard about him because he converted to Catholicism while preparing to play Padre Pio in a new movie about the saint.  There were many graces and encounters that led to his conversion, but Shia speaks in the interview about how he identified with this Capuchin Friar who was misunderstood, suffered false accusations, and was basically confined to his room and not permitted to celebrate the sacraments publicly for nearly 10 years.  When faced with this indignity and suffering, Padre Pio could have left the monastery and started his own “church” - he was popular, he had a following and many supporters, but he chose to embrace the cross and was obedient to what the Church asked him to do.  He didn’t rebel, but he quietly took the “exile” as a way to become more Christ-like and to continue to serve as he could.  Padre Pio bore the “stigmata” - the wounds of Christ on his body.  He was identified with the suffering of Christ, which is a suffering that redeemed the world.  Bishop Barron comments, “It is precisely through our pain very often that we find salvation, but also we become a vehicle of salvation to others.”  Shia felt this deep identification with Pio and began to look at the way Pio moved through his exile and began to follow that way.  When Shia began to surrender and to let go of his own ego and “get out of the way”, things became freer for him.  Barron points out, listening to this story, that in the 1920s, in the life of Padre Pio, God had Shia LaBeouf in mind.  The suffering going on in Padre Pio’s life at that time was for the salvation of this young actor in 2022.  LaBeouf says, “when you look at this, it is like a suffering ‘hack’”.  Then you feel that the suffering is a gift.  That you actually blessed me with this.  The old me was upset and resentful when I was accused by this woman.  Now I think that that woman saved my life.  The miracle is the change in my perspective.  I could not have done it on my own.”  This man who was very close to ending his own life, is now on fire for Christ.  LaBeouf was saved by following a man who in the midst of his suffering kept his eyes on Christ. 

          How do we respond to what is happening to us and not just look at ourselves as victims of circumstances?  A responsible person lives life as a response to an Other who is calling him in the circumstances of his life.  We have to focus not on what we have to do - a list of tasks to accomplish - but rather on the face of the one who is calling us.  John the Baptist calls to us: “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.”  Jesus is the suffering servant, the lamb led to the slaughter, the one whose sacrifice embraced the suffering of all humanity, who entered the depths of human despair and made of it, through his self-offering, a path to God, a path to salvation and new life for all.  We can only find Christ where we are  - in the life we are living - not in a life we wish we had.  In times of trial, Jesus is not absent, but he is walking toward us and with us.  Let’s ask to “behold him” as we do at every Mass at the elevation of the Sacred Host.  He is “hidden” but present.  He is here to feed us, strengthen us, and accompany us on the journey.  When we struggle with suffering, let’s pray as we do in the psalm: “Here am I, Lord; I come to do your will.”  It is not just about us and fixing our problems or changing our circumstances or even helping our neighbor.  That is “too little” for God.  He wants to make each of us a light to the nations, so that his salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.

English

Epiphany of the Lord

In the Feast of the Epiphany, the church celebrates the manifestation to the world of the newborn Christ as Messiah, Son of God, and Savior of the world.  Today, we celebrate the adoration of Jesus by the wise men from the East.  The wise men represent the “nations” of the world - that Jesus was born for all people, and that he is the fulfillment of the longing of every human heart.  The wise men were pagans, i.e., non-Jews, most likely practitioners of an Eastern religion, but God manifested himself to them.  We might even consider them scientists of a sort - seeking meaning and trying to make sense of what they observed in nature.  It was the presence of a star - something in nature that fascinated them, that moved them to set out on a journey that would lead them to God.  They didn’t set out trying to find God, they were simply pursing what was of interest to them - what they found attractive.  They were astronomers or astrologers - star gazers - and when they saw a star that was mysterious - extraordinary, they wanted to discover the reason for its appearance.  They wanted to know the “why” behind the reality they observed.  They were employing reason because reason seeks the ultimate reason or meaning behind the existence of all things.  The Epiphany shows us that God uses our interests and events in nature - our experience - if we are attentive to them - to lead us to discover him.  God calls us in this way.  As with the star of Bethlehem, “epiphanies” of God are associated with “seeing the light” - not literally, but figuratively.  An epiphany is a profound awareness of something significant in our lives - something that clarifies or sheds light on the direction of our lives and moves us.  An epiphany is a revelation - an event that in a sense “pulls back the veil” and allows the splendor or glory of God to break through into our lives.  It is a grace - something given to us that we can’t control or make happen. 

          When I reflect on my own experience, my own journey to the priesthood, I can see that God used the same method to draw me to himself as he did the Magi.  In seeking my path in life - my career, I did not set out looking for God - saying to myself, “how do I become a priest.”  I was simply pursuing my interests - in my case, law and politics - thinking that in them I could find meaning and purpose in my life.  One of the first epiphanies that I had was when I was working as a paralegal for a New York law firm.  I wanted to work there because that is where the money was.  But the epiphany I had after less than a year at the firm was that money could not buy happiness.  I would say at the time in my early twenties, that I knew that having money could not make you happy, but did I really believe it?  I was acting and living and making decisions as if I thought money was the path to happiness.  I was working closely with partners in the firm who had more money than they knew what to do with, but they were not happy.  In fact, they were mostly miserable.  I remember laying in bed one night in a hotel after a fancy dinner thinking, “Is this it? Is this what it is all about?  There has to be more to life than this.”  It was an epiphany.  I knew at the core of my being that I was made for more and that a legal career was not it, but I still sought the fulfillment of my interests in a worldly way.  In search of the newborn king, the Magi go to the seat of earthly power in the Jewish Kingdom.  They go to Jerusalem.  Makes sense.  I had an interest in politics, so why not go to the center of political power in the United States?  Soon after leaving the law firm, I moved to the Washington, D.C. area to make my way in politics.  After working at a Congressman’s office, a think-tank and advocacy group, and then several different public relations firms, I was frustrated and disillusioned.  I was close to power, doing what I thought I wanted to do, but I was not happy.  At one point, between jobs, I was stressed out about finding work.  A counselor I was seeing suggested that to give myself a break from the job-hunt and to not get overly obsessed with finding a new job, that I volunteer someplace one day each week.  There was a homeless shelter a few blocks from where I lived.  I walked passed it on my way to work most days but didn’t pay much attention to it.  I stopped in one day and offered to volunteer.  To my surprise, I really enjoyed it.  I was not making any money, but I was happy.  I was happy working with the poor - those who had no power.  This was shocking to me because it was not what I expected at all.  And I had to pursue this fact.  Why was it that in working with the poor I became “radiant” and my heart began to throb and overflow?  This was an epiphany.  We find ourselves by giving ourselves away.  We are made not for money and power, but for love.  Still not knowing what this all meant, I began to look into graduate programs in social work.  It was then that a dream put the idea of the priesthood before me, and I set off on the path that led to the seminary. 

          St. Paul makes reference to his “epiphany” - “that the mystery was made known to me by revelation”.  We know that Paul experienced a breakthrough of God’s grace  - a light - that changed the direction of his life.  These epiphanies happen not just for our own conversion, but that we become “stewards” of God’s grace.  Paul has this experience of being chosen at a particular time and place so that God’s promise of the Good News can be extended to all the nations.  The epiphany expands his understanding (he has a conversion of mind and heart) and sends him on mission.  When we are attentive to the epiphanies in our life and follow them with wonder and humility, not thinking we know what they mean or where they will lead us, we will experience a richness to life beyond what we imagined was possible.  Our gifts are then used for God’s purpose.  God’s light goes before us to open our eyes to the light of faith - that we are chosen and wanted by God to participate in the mystery of salvation.  If we follow the interests that God has placed in our heart, we need not fear the journey.  The journey purifies those interests and reveals that God dwells among us.  O come let us adore Him!