We share in the Resurrection

I've had problems with the scheduling of posts. I apologize for the delays. May Christ's Resurrection bring all of you closer to the Light of the World and guide you in the path to holiness. May all of you have a beautiful, blessed Easter Season!

-o-o-o-

"When we hear this account in Saint John’s Gospel about Our Lord’s appearance to Saint Mary Magdalene, we can only imagine the joy she would have had. Consider the context: Here was a woman who had been possessed by seven demons and lived a tragic life, becoming a prostitute and doing all kinds of terrible things.

When Our Lord freed her from all of this, she was absolutely in love with Him. Not in a negative way, but truly in love with the One who freed her from the bonds of the devil. So, imagine the sadness this woman would have had. We can see the power of that love; she was willing to be there, at the foot of the Cross. All of His disciples, except Saint John, fled; and there she was with Our Lady. We see the tenacity of this lady and the sadness, the loneliness, the tragedy in the heart that she would have felt when Our Lord died.

Now, she comes to anoint His body because she did not understand what the Resurrection was all about. She figured she would come and anoint the body of the Lord. Then, she finds that the body is not there. How empty, how downhearted she must have been at that moment to see that the Lord was not present; not understanding what the Resurrection was about and assuming that someone took the body of Our Lord. She finally recognized Our Lord when He turned to her and said her name "Mary." Her heart, from being so down, must have just leapt with utter joy at being able to see the Lord and talk with Him.

Imagine the excitement she would have had in her voice when she ran to the apostles to explain to them what had happened. She had seen the Lord! Of course, we know they did not believe her because they did not believe in the resurrection from the dead; but she knew what had happened and her heart must have been absolutely radiant, pounding, without a doubt. Her heart was radiant with joy at the truth that Jesus Christ was risen from the dead. The tomb was empty, except for two angels who were worshiping the spot where the Son of God, in His humanness, had lain in death; even that she did not understand. Now she knew that the One, Whom her heart loved more than anyone in the world, was risen from the dead. The Good News was given to her to bring this message to the apostles; to tell them, even though they would not believe. It did not matter to her that they would not believe. I am sure it bothered her, but it did not matter. That was not going to shake her faith. Just as their infidelity at the Cross did not shake her fidelity, she was going to be there with the Lord, no matter what.

That is why the Lord would appear to her. We do not hear about the appearances to Our Lady. All the saints tell us that Our Lord appeared to His mother first. But Mary Magdalene, after Our Blessed Lady, is the first to whom the Lord appeared because she is the one who remained faithful. She was the one who was willing to risk her life to be at the foot of the Cross. She was the one who would be with Jesus to the end. Therefore, right at the beginning of this new life, Jesus comes to her and gives her the privilege of being the very first to bring the news of the Resurrection to those who did not yet believe.

This Resurrection is what inspires Saint Peter and gives him the grace, being one who not only did not believe but was terrified to be known as a follower of Jesus, to stand up in front of a crowd of thousands of people and proclaim his faith and the name of Jesus Christ; to tell them "God has made both Lord and Messiah this Jesus whom you have crucified. Therefore, you must be baptized into Jesus Christ."

We share that life. We share in the Resurrection already. The joy of Saint Mary Magdalen should be ours, but even in a more incredible way because we share the life. She saw it, but until she was baptized she did not share it. We do; we are baptized into the Lord. Saint Peter says, at the end of the first reading, that when we are baptized into the name of Jesus we receive the Holy Spirit, and it is in this that our sins will be forgiven. It is in this, Saint Peter tells us, that we will be saved. But our lives must change. It is not enough just to say, "Well, I am baptized now. Therefore, it is enough." We are baptized into Jesus Christ; therefore, we must live the life of Jesus Christ. We must live a life of faith, of hope, and of love. We must be filled with the same kind of love that filled Saint Mary Magdalene’s heart: We will be with Our Lord, regardless; we will not be ashamed of Jesus; we are willing to stand with Him at the moment of His death; we will be proclaiming the Gospel because of our faith in the Resurrection. That is what Saint Mary Magdalene did. That is what the Lord is asking of us.

So, we can ask ourselves today, "Are we ashamed of Jesus Christ?" Now, on one level, obviously you would not be here right now if you were. But when you go out into the world, are you? Are you willing to be known as a follower of Jesus by the way you live, by the way you act, by the way you speak? Are we willing to stand up with the Lord? Are we willing to be counted? Are we willing to be ridiculed for the name of Jesus Christ? We do not want to be like Nicodemus, a disciple in secret, who came to Him at night because he was afraid. We need to be like Saint Mary Magdalene because Jesus Christ has freed us. He has freed us from sin; he has freed us from death; he has freed us from Satan’s grasp. We, now, should be on fire with love for Jesus. We should be willing, like Saint Mary Magdalene when she saw what He did for her - she was willing to stand with Him, no matter what it might cost. She was rewarded to be the first, after Our Lady, to see the Resurrected Christ; and to be the first one to preach the Gospel message that Jesus Christ is truly risen from the dead."

-- From a homily by Fr Robert Altier, ocds

Palm Sunday

"In the Gospels today, we hear, first of all, about the triumphal entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem. In the second Gospel reading of the Passion, we hear about how the whole crowd that was praising God and glorifying Him had turned so quickly against the Lord. We need to look at these different elements. Needless to say, there is so much to say about these reading that I could be here for hours, but I will spare you that; so we will just touch on a few of the points to highlight some of the things that were going on, some of the things that we might not recognize or understand immediately.


First of all, we hear Jesus coming into Jerusalem on a donkey. We ask ourselves, "Why?" Well, first of all, there was a prophecy that the Messiah would ride into Jerusalem on a donkey. So we say, "Okay, that needed to be fulfilled." But there was a purpose for that. Many people will say that in the time of Our Lord, the victor, the king who was victorious, would come into the city on a white horse, letting the whole world know that he was the victor. But if one was in defeat, he would come in on a donkey - a sign of humility. That is not so much the reason. It was more a matter of obedience to God. By this point, the Jewish people had become very disobedient to the Will of God. They were not following what God had required very specifically in the Scriptures. It is absolutely forbidden in the Scriptures for the people of Israel to ride a horse.

Now, on first hearing that, we might say, "Well, that’s kind of a foolish thing." But if you read, for instance in some of the books, like back in Kings at the time of David, they rode donkeys. They didn’t ride horses into battle; they rode donkeys. Now, that again seems foolish to us because donkeys don’t run and the horses are quite fast. We ask, "Why would they ride donkeys? Why doesn’t God allow them to have horses?" Because the only place in the ancient world where horses were raised was in Egypt. Egypt, of course, was the enemy of Israel and God had forbidden that the people of Israel would make a pact with Egypt in order to have horses. And so, at this point in the midst of the disobedience of the Jewish people, while they were indeed riding horses at the time of Our Lord, Jesus Himself, obedient to the Will of God and in fulfillment of the prophecy, came in riding a donkey.

We see the people shouting out their Hosannas to God. But then, within a week’s time, as I mentioned, they all turn against Him. We see those odd exchanges between Pilate and the chief priests; and between Pilate and Jesus. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to us. It seems that Pilate is trying to push this away; indeed he was. The Jewish people had a concordat with the Romans. I should say that it was really the other way around: the Romans had signed a concordat with the Jewish people. The Jews had their own law. We don’t hear the Passion quite as explicitly in Luke’s Gospel as we do in the others. As the week draws on, we hear in Saint John’s Gospel on Friday, for instance, all the different elements of the law. Keep these things in mind.

The concordat that the Romans signed with Israel was that the Jews would be the ones to take care of their own people. If a Jewish person was arrested by the Romans, the Romans could do nothing. They must turn him over to the Jewish authorities, and the Jewish authorities would try the person for their crimes. The only person in history known to have been turned over to the Romans by the Jews is Jesus Christ. So, once again, that is the reason for Our Lord telling us three times that He is going to be handed over to the pagans. Why was there a whole group of people following Him, including the women crying and lamenting? Because they had violated their own law. It wasn’t merely that the Messiah was going to be killed, because many of them did not understand that. What they saw was the injustice. Why was a Jew being crucified? Why was a Jew being handed over to pagans? This violated the concordat; that is why Pilate was trying to push the whole thing away. He knew this was against the law.

But then you can look at it the other way, and you see this most clearly in Saint Mark’s Gospel. We see that Herod is in Jerusalem at that time. Herod was the tetrarch. This is not the Herod that wanted to kill Jesus when He was a baby, but rather this is Herod’s son. Herod, at this point, was the king in Galilee. He was now in Jerusalem for some purpose. Therefore, because this governor would have been there, there would have been 1,000 Roman soldiers who would have come with him. You also have at the Praetorium, another group of soldiers who would have been there because of Pontius Pilate and the whole situation as they were patrolling the area of Jerusalem. There would have been thousands of Roman soldiers who could do nothing to a Jewish person. The Jews could make fun of the Roman soldiers; they could slander them; yell at them; throw things at them; and the Roman soldiers could do nothing because, by their own concordat, they were forbidden from touching any Jews.

After all these things had gone on, now they finally had their opportunity. Here was a Jewish man, and He had been turned over to them. To take Him into the Praetorium; to flog Him; to make a crown of thorns and robe Him in purple; to abuse Him in various ways; they now had their chance. The Romans would throw people to the lions and cheer gleefully as they saw the bloodshed. This was a group of Roman soldiers who had not seen much blood for a long time. You can imagine the cruelty and the mob mentality as they went after Jesus. It wasn’t just an ordinary flogging, it was a rather extraordinary thing, even for Pilate. You see his waffling. On one level, he’s trying to sound like he is somewhat righteous; but here he is waffling and saying, "Well, I find this man completely innocent, why don’t I just have him flogged?" If He is innocent, why would He be flogged? Finally, he waffles completely and says, "Fine. Crucify him." Again, this is totally violating everything in the concordat that had been signed.

As we see these different elements, it helps us to understand the cruelty and the incredible suffering that Our Lord endured on a human level. We see in the garden what He suffered as He prayed and the wave of all of our sins came down upon Him. He was crushed. Remember, the word Gethsemane (as in the Garden of Gethsemane), means the olive press. So, the Garden of Gethsemane is the Garden of the Olive Press. It was there that they would bring the olives. A huge press they had with a huge stone would squeeze the olives and the oil would come out and drip over the sides of the press. When the olives were squeezed, the oil would come out of the pores of the olive. In the ancient world, they called that the blood of the olive. As the blood poured forth from the pores of Our Blessed Lord, He was being crushed, squeezed under the weight of our sins. The blood poured forth from His very pores. He was crushed for our offenses.

On Friday, when we read from Isaiah chapter 53, and when we hear the Passion from Saint John, these are some things to ponder and keep in mind. The intense suffering that Our Lord endured. The cruelty with which he suffered. And all of this because of us; because He loved us even to the point of death. He was obedient to His Father out of love for us. That is the thing we can never lose sight of. Jesus’ suffering, His Passion, His death, His crucifixion, is not something we can put at an arm’s distance. It is not something we can look at objectively and say, "What an unfortunate thing. What a terrible injustice that happened." Instead, it is something we need to look at subjectively and personally. As we ponder these things, and meditate upon them in this most holy of weeks, make it your own. Recognize it is because of your sins and my sins; but each one of us looking at it says, "He did this for me. He did it because of me. That suffering is because of me; I did that to Him. It’s not just the Romans, it’s not just the Jews, it was me. I’m the one who turned Him over to Pilate; I’m the one who crucified Him; I’m the one who mocked Him. It is my sins that weighed down upon Him. I’m the one who crushed Him." That is what we need to keep in mind.

Don’t leave it out there someplace as something that happened 2000 years ago and has no bearing on us. Because the Crucifixion of Our Blessed Lord is happening still. In just a few moments, on the altar, Jesus Christ will be sacrificed. Not again, but still. The exact same sacrifice as happened on the Cross 2000 years ago. He is sacrificing Himself now for us and because of us. He gives Himself to us in Holy Communion because He loves us. So, as we ponder these saving mysteries, make them your own; take them into your heart. Walk through them with Our Blessed Lord. With those women who followed Him, weep and lament for yourselves and for your children, because He did this out of love for you."

-- From a homily by Fr Robert Altier, ocds

Each one of us is a new creation in Jesus Chris

""See, I am doing something new. Do you not perceive it?" The Lord asks this question through the prophet Isaiah in the first reading today. He tells us that we are to forget the things of the past, and we are to look ahead because there is something entirely new. The interesting thing in this is, that when He is talking about forgetting the things of the past, He is even talking about the most important events in Israel’s history. He talks about the opening of the Red Sea. He talks about leading Pharaoh’s chariots and army out into the sea and then closing the sea on them while the people of Israel entered through the sea and were freed. Yet he says, "Don’t think about that so much. Look forward. Stop looking back and look ahead." While it is important to know that God has done these extraordinary things and He is with His people, what is more necessary is to know not simply that He was with our ancestors years ago, but that He is with us now. And that He is doing something now that He has not done in the past.

So, for the people of Israel, they might fall into the trap of thinking, "Why isn’t God working the extraordinary things He did in the past?" In fact, we even see that several times we read in the Scriptures where some of the people would say, "We have heard of the things You did in the past for our forefathers. Where are You today? You did these extraordinary things: there were the plagues in Egypt, the crossing of the Red Sea, the fire on the mountain, and the Ten Commandments. There were all these extraordinary events that took place and we are not seeing them today. Where are You, Lord?" What He is saying is that He is doing something entirely different. It is entirely new. We cannot look today to try to figure out, based on the past, what is happening now. We can’t look to the events of the crossing of the Red Sea to say, "Shouldn’t these extraordinary kinds of things be happening today?" He says, "No, I am doing something entirely different now." So we need to look in a different way.

Saint Paul picks up the exact same theme in the second reading today. He says that he no longer looks to the past, but he only struggles forward into the future. He is striving for the goal. For us, this is where we can see this newness that the Lord is talking about. The Church puts these two readings in juxtaposition for us today so that we can understand what this newness is about. It has to do with our sins. We saw last week where the Lord said to Joshua that He "has removed the reproach of Egypt from the people of Israel." He’s removed the sinfulness. He’s removed everything that Egypt stands for: the slavery to sin and all the evil. And He is doing something which is entirely new. Saint Paul is saying, "I don’t look to the past. I’ve put all my sins behind me, they are forgiven, they are gone. I now strive forward to the future. I look forward to the goal."

It is a very important thing that he points out as well, he says, "..not that I consider that I already have possession of it." It is a very important passage, if you are talking to any of your Fundamentalist friends who want to say that they are already saved. Here is Saint Paul saying, "I do not consider that I have already achieved the goal." He is not claiming that he’s already saved. He is striving for the goal. So are we. But oftentimes, what happens is that we get stuck in our sins. We keep looking backwards, instead of looking forward. It is true that what happened in the past did, in fact, happen. We keep saying, "Lord, look at what I did." We even wonder to ourselves sometimes and say, "Can God forgive this? How can I be forgiven for this?" And the devil is right there to hold our sins in front of our face and say, "Look at what you did!" He’s trying to get us to despair of God’s mercy. So like Saint Paul, we have to be able to say, "I’ve put all of the things of the past behind me and I look forward to the goal. I‘m looking ahead to Jesus; I’m looking to the Resurrection." If you have confessed your sins, they are gone. They are forgiven, they’re not there anymore. Stop looking at them and look ahead. Look to the One who has forgiven your sins.

While it is true that we have sinned, it is more true that we have been forgiven. As Saint Paul says elsewhere, "Where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more." So, no matter how horrible our sins have been, the grace of God is there in abundance, not only to make up for our sins, but even to project us beyond them. The Lord makes very clear in the Gospel reading today, that He doesn’t hold these things against us any longer. When you think about what happened to this woman in the Gospel, these people actually catch her in the very act of adultery. There is no trial that is necessary, she is caught red-handed, if you will. They bring her to Jesus to test Him, to see what He’s going to do with this woman. Is He really going to follow the Law? They themselves wouldn’t. By that time in Judaism, they would not have stoned this woman. But they bring her to Jesus to see if He’s going to do this. After all, if He is a righteous teacher, the righteous one would follow the Law. So naturally, He would say, "Stone her. She was caught in adultery, stone her." That is what they were looking for: Is He really going to do what the Law says, or is He going to follow what the customs of the people were at that point and say, "Yes, I know that is what the Law says, but we won’t worry about it." Once again, He just turns the whole thing right around on them. As they walk away, He looks at the woman and says, "Where have they all gone? Has no one condemned you?" Then He says, "Neither do I."

Now put that into the context of your own self. Jesus knows the sins we have committed. We have been caught in the very act of any sin that we have ever committed. We are totally guilty. Yet, when we confess our sins He looks at us and says, "Has no one condemned you? Did that priest sitting in the confessional not condemn you? You came to him and you actually told him, ‘This is what I did.’ Did he not condemn you?" Then He looks at us and says, "Neither do I." But the next line is also exceedingly important. He says, "Now go, and sin no more."

God’s mercy is not something that we can presume upon. It’s not something that we can say, "We can go out and sin because we can just come to confession and it’s not a problem. God doesn’t care if we sin because He doesn’t condemn us anyway." That is presumption. Presumption is a mortal sin. We need to make sure we are doing what it actually says in the Act of Contrition: that not only are we going to confess our sins but we truly do intend to amend our lives, we are going to try to avoid the near occasions of sin, and we’re going to do what we can to change. Some of the Acts of Contrition put it as it was in the Gospel. They actually say: I firmly intend with Your help to sin no more.
Which is exactly what the Lord tells us in the Gospel reading today: Sin no more. That is what we need to be about. We need to be renewed in mind and heart. We need to have a change, we need to stop living according to the old way and live according to the new way. It’s not just a matter of us saying, "Let’s stop thinking about our sins." But it is a matter of changing our entire life, of putting the past behind us, of "taking on the new man" as Saint Paul says. It is a matter of dying to ourselves and to the old way and living according to the new way. This is something which is very difficult for us because we live in a world that is totally immersed in the old way.

Each one of us is a new creation in Jesus Christ. As we have seen over the last couple of weeks, the world does not want to be a new creation. But we are immersed in the world all too often. What would Saint Paul say about us today? "It’s all lost and I consider it rubbish." The word that he uses is even a little bit more rabid than that. It’s rubbish, it’s garbage! When you drive home today, look around, and when you get home, ask yourself, "Do I consider all of this lost, that I might have Jesus Christ? Or am I attached to all of these things? Am I really living my life for Jesus Christ?"

You see, if we aren’t living our life in a day to day way for Jesus Christ, neither are we going to be able to put our sins behind us entirely because they are always going to be right there. They are always going to be staring us in our face because we continue to live the same kind of life. Maybe we are not committing the sin anymore, but we haven’t fully turned our lives around, either. We have turned them to some degree, we have turned away from the sin, but we are still living immersed in the world. Saint Paul is telling us, "Put everything of the past behind." Not only the sin but the entire way that we have lived. Change, so that we’re living a new life in Christ. Consider it all lost. There is nothing in this world that is not passing. There is nothing in this world that we are going to take with us. Everything here is going to be left behind. Therefore, we need to start now to leave it behind. Look ahead, look at Jesus.

When we look at the people around us, that will change everything if we are looking at Jesus. We will begin to truly love them. Solely for their sake, for who they are. Not for us, not for what we get out of it, but for them. All the things we have, we are going to approach them in a different way. We will use what we need, because we need them. We will see the good in the things that are there and we will use them for the glory of God, not for our own selfish whims. Everything that we do will be directed toward salvation. That is the way we need to begin living now, in all things. Next time you go to the store and you are going to buy something, ask yourself, "Do I really need this? Will this thing help to lead me closer to Heaven? Or is it going to lead me away from Jesus? Is it about myself? Or is it about the good of others and true necessity?" When we look at other people, when we look at our families, we can ask ourselves, "Am I truly loving them for their sake? Am I pouring myself out? Am I serving the needs of others out of love for neighbor? Or do I look instead for others to take care of me? Is it about the self or is it about other people? Is it about me or is it about Christ?"

Do we see the surpassing value of Jesus Christ? Do we embrace that? Do we live it? That is what we need to take on: to strive for that goal like Saint Paul said. He didn’t consider that he already had it. So we are not going to walk out of here today completely turned; it is a process. It is something that we have to keep working at. But do we want to do it? This is the real question that we need to ask today. Do we want to put the things of the world, and the things of our own past behind us? Do we really want to live in Jesus Christ? Do we want to know of the surpassing value of knowing Jesus Christ? To be united to Him, living our life for Him. Sinning no more. "God is doing something entirely new. Do you not perceive it?" He is doing it in your heart, in your mind, in your life. He is turning you around. Don’t look to the past; put the past entirely behind you. Instead, look inside and see what God is doing. Ask Him in prayer to show you what He is doing in your life, how He is changing it, how He is turning it around. Look to the future. Strive for the goal. The goal is Jesus Christ and eternal life with Him.

-- From a homily by Fr Robert Altier, ocds

You cannot separate the Cross and the Resurrection

"Our Lord tells us that it is when we lift up the Son of Man that we will realize that He is I AM; that He is Yahweh; that He is God. But only when He is lifted up. This is the important thing that we need to look at. Throughout history, God has sent prophets, judges, and saints. He has sent people who were able to do extraordinary things. There have also been many people who have come into the world with various claims of different types about how they themselves are indeed the Messiah. Yet, we can ask ourselves, "How do we know that Jesus really is who He says that He is? If there are other people who made that claim, how do we know that He is the Messiah?" If somebody came along today saying, "I’m God. I’m the Messiah. I’m the one that God sent into the world," how would you be able to say absolutely and definitively either: "Yes, that is true," or "No, that is not"? Our Lord told us it is only when we lift Him up from the earth. Only in the Crucifixion will we come to know that He is God; that He is one with His heavenly Father. Any of us, if we were insane or totally caught up in ourselves and wanted to lie, could say the words of Jesus. But who of us can prove it? Who can live it? So, how do we know that He is the Lord? It is only when we study the crucifix.

There are many Christians who want to remove the Lord from the crucifix. They want to say, "Well, Jesus is risen from the dead now. He’s not on the cross anymore. We don’t need to worry about that." But note the reading that the Church puts in juxtaposition to this because they recognize the importance of Moses making a seraph. When the people had been bitten, they had to look at the bronze serpent up on top of the pole in order to be healed. So too, those of us who have been bitten by the sting of the serpent, by Original Sin and by our own sins. The only way we are going to be healed is when we look at the One who has been lifted up from the earth. When we look at the One who became sin for us. When we look at the One who "became a curse for us," as Saint Paul says. He took on our sins. He took on the curse for us. He is the one who healed us when we could not be healed. It is only in that, that we come to see who He is. If we do not look at the crucifix; if we do not study the crucifix very carefully; if we do not spend time to meditate upon the Crucifixion of Our Lord, we will never come to understand fully that He is God and what it is that He has done for us.

Looking at the Resurrection isn’t going to be enough to do it. You cannot separate the Cross and the Resurrection. Looking just at the miracles and His teachings isn’t going to do it. Someone could read the teachings of Our Lord and say (as the people did in His own day), "He’s crazy! This guy is really caught up. He’s got the Messiah complex." If you go to the hospital, in the psyche ward, you are likely to find three or four people who claim to be Jesus. You are also likely to find a couple of other people who simply claim to be God. There are a lot of people who, in their insanity, make some of these same kinds of claims. So we need to look beyond simply that.

The reason we believe in His teaching is because He went to the Cross. The reason why we can look at all the other things that he does is because He went to the Cross for us. Had He not done that, we would have no reason in the world to believe that He is the Son of God. There is no way we could ever be able to say He is the one. Nothing else really, truly proves it beyond a shadow of a doubt; except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. That is why Saint Paul says, "May I boast in nothing but the Cross of my Lord Jesus Christ. May I boast of nothing but Jesus Christ and Him crucified." It is the power of the Cross that heals us. It is the power of the Cross that sets us free. If we are really going to be the Christians we profess to be, there is no Christian without the Cross because there is no Christ without the Cross. So if we want to be healed of the bite of the serpent, we need to look at the one who has been lifted up and hung on a pole - The One who is truly I AM: Jesus Christ, the true Son of God and the only savior of the world, the One who proved it with His very life."

-- From a homily by Fr Robert Altier, ocds

Our love for one another is an overflow of the love for God

"Saint John tells us that we have to love one another because love is of God. Then he goes on to tell us that God is love. Now the importance of this, of course, is that each one of us is created in the image and likeness of God. God is love; that means we are created in the image and likeness of love. We are made to love and be loved.
Love is something that we cannot initiate, however. Saint John makes that very clear at the end of the reading when he tells us, "Love consists in this: not that we have loved God, but that He has loved us and that He has sent His Son as the expiation for our sins." Love comes from God, and He puts the love into our hearts. Then, with the love that God gives to each one of us, we are able to love one another. Our love for one another is really an overflow of the love for God.
So if we want to be able to love one another more, we have to love God more. It is just that simple. There is that hierarchy of love that I have many times mentioned. For those with marriage and a family: if you want, first, to love your children more, you need to love your spouse more because your love for your children flows from your love for your spouse. But if you want to love your spouse more, you must love God more because your love for your spouse will flow from your love for God. If you want to be able to love anybody, you have to be able to love God. God loves all of us so He puts the love into all of us so that we can love.
But for most of us, love is a selfish thing - in many ways, at least; it is not perfected. We love other people in a couple of different ways. First of all, we think we are in love when we have gushy feelings. That is not what love is all about. It is not an emotion; it is a virtue. Love seeks the good of the other always and in all things. This is why Jesus tells us that we are to love our enemies. If we love our enemies, we are probably not going to have gushy feelings toward them or romantic ideas. That is not what love is about. But we are to do what is best, even for our enemies. That is what He is requiring of us.
He calls us to love, but if we want to love perfectly we need to overcome the emotional part, and we also need to overcome the other element, that is, the selfishness. We will do something good for someone else because we want something in return. Everything that we do is usually calculated out a little bit. "How is this person going to think of me? What am I going to get in return for this? What is it that I am going to get from this?" Everything is about the self. Until we are perfect, every single thing that we do has something of the self in it. But we need to be striving for perfect love. We may start out with a good intention to simply do something good for another person without seeking any kind of recognition or accolades of any variety. But we know our humanness well enough. And it takes about 30 seconds to a minute (if we are really getting good at it) before we start thinking: "Well, this person better notice what I'm doing for them!" or "What am I going to get from this?" or "Maybe they'll do this for me." We see how quickly even our best intentions turn selfish. Love is selflessness. But most of us are so filled with selfishness that we do not know how to love. It is there; we have the capacity to do it; we just do not know how.
That is why Jesus, in the Gospel reading, would look at His disciples when they come with the suggestion to feed these people - of course, it is exactly what He had been doing, not in their bellies but in their minds. (He had compassion on them so He taught them at length, Saint Mark tells us) - and say, "Give them something yourselves." In other words, "Give yourselves." They did not understand. "Are we to spend 200 days' wages to be able to feed these people?" they asked. Jesus then works the miracle to be able to feed them, to be able to show by the twelve baskets that are gathered up that He is the Messiah for the twelve tribes of Israel. They are to recognize that this is similar to the manna in the desert that fed the twelve tribes for all those days, but that it is much more than that. It is He who feeds them, and He feeds them with Himself. But they do not understand that. There is the second miracle of the loaves and fishes in which they gather seven baskets to be able to show that He is the Messiah for the whole world, for the Gentiles, the seven that makes up the fullness of the whole thing. But they missed that one too; they did not understand.
What about us? Jesus continues to feed us. He feeds us with His teaching. Much more importantly, He feeds us with Himself; He gives Himself entirely. Then He commands us to love. In other words, "Give yourself entirely. Do for others what I have done for you." That is exactly what He tells us: to love one another as He has loved us. And so that means to be an example, to teach, to feed, to give ourselves - not to have gushy, romantic feelings but to give. And that hurts; it does not feel good most of the time. But He did not ask us to have good feelings about other people; He commanded us to love them.
So we need to look at the people that we do not like very well. We even need to look mostly at the people that we love the most. How do we treat them? Are we truly seeking their good? Are we pouring ourselves out? Are we giving of ourselves? Are we doing for them what Our Lord does for us? We come every morning and Jesus gives Himself entirely to us. He feeds us, and then He asks that we would go out into the world and do the same. After receiving Jesus today in Holy Communion, ask yourself if you are doing for others what the Lord has just done for you. Then ask Him how you can do it more perfectly so that each day we can continue to grow in love until it is perfected, until there is nothing selfish remaining, and our whole life, then, is offered as a sacrifice for others the way that Jesus' life is offered for us."


-- From a homily by Fr. Robert Altier, ocds (January 8, 2002)

Let us do everything we can to grow in holiness and to unite ourselves with Him

"Saint John tells us that God has given us a commandment; and the commandment, he tells us, is that we are to believe in the Name of His Son Jesus Christ and to love one another just as He commanded us. When we look at the commandment of Christ, it is to love one another as we have been loved by Him, which means to love in a self-sacrificing manner, to look at the crucifix and to be able to see how He loved us. Of course, in this holy season, we can also look at the manger and be able to see once again the way that He loved us. He gave everything; He sacrificed it all for us. He was willing to come into this world as one of us, to be born in the most humble of conditions, and to die in the most humble of conditions.

So when we consider His love for us and that we are first and foremost to believe in Him, which is the first critical point, it is to believe as we have spoken many times not only in Who He is but in what He is all about. That is, it is not enough to believe at an arm’s distance and say, “Well, I guess I can believe that Jesus is God.” So what? What difference does that make in our lives? We have to remember, as Saint James makes very clear, that even the devils believe and they tremble, but that does not get them out of hell. And so to believe in the Name of God’s only Son is to believe in the fullness of the Person of Jesus Christ – that He is the fullness of truth, that He is the way, that He is the life – and then we are to love as He has commanded us to love, which is to love one another and to love Him as He has loved us, to give ourselves entirely as He has given Himself to us, which is really the same thing as saying to believe wholly in Who He is, to have faith in Him, because to have that faith in Him is to believe everything that He is and that He teaches.

On one level, it is as simple as can be. He is not asking anything that is beyond our ability to do, but what He is asking, because of our sinful nature, is fairly heroic on our part. To die to self does not come naturally to any one of us; to live for others is not an easy thing for us either. In fact, even as much as we try sometimes to live for others, if we really dissect things that we do, we are probably going to find that in our attempt to live for others we are really seeking the self anyway. Somewhere underneath there, there is almost always going to be some element of selfishness. And so we realize that we are not loving the way that we have been commanded to love. It is to get the self out of the way and to be able to put ourselves at the service of others, to spend our lives for others, or, as Saint Paul says, “to be poured out like a libation” so that nothing is left of the self. When nothing is left of the self then it can be filled up with Jesus Himself, and then we can truly live the life of Christ.

That is possible only when we are already striving to live the life of Christ, that is, doing everything we can to grow in holiness and to unite ourselves with Him so that He can live in us and through us. It is to try to get ourselves out of the way and to love Him, first and foremost; and then, flowing from our love for Him, to love one another. That is our call. That is the commandment that Our Lord has given us and it is reiterated here by Saint John. It is made exceedingly clear for us. When it all boils down, it is two things: Believe in Jesus Christ, that is, the fullness of Jesus Christ (that includes the Church He founded and all that She teaches, because the Church is Jesus Christ) and love. That is all it comes down to. Or, Saint Augustine makes it even more easy as he says, “Love, and do what you will,” because love never does what is wrong. Love always seeks the truth and it always seeks what is best. Therefore, if we just simply focus on the love, to love as we have been loved, everything else will fall into place. But it still means to get the self out of the way and to love as we have been commanded."

-- From a homily by Fr. Robert Altier, ocds (January 5, 2004)

Feast of All Saints

"Today the Church takes time to celebrate the feast of all the saints in Heaven. When we consider all the saints, of course, we normally think about the saints whose names are known to all of us, the great heroes of our Faith, the ones we can hold up as an example for everybody to be able to see what the Christian life is to be. Yet, we know at the same time, from the vision of Saint John, that he did not only see three or four thousand people - the canonized saints - but rather, he saw a multitude of people from every language, nation, race and people. It was a countless number. And so we understand, then, that there are many thousands of saints who are unknown to most people. They have lived their lives. They have "fought the fight", they have "run the race", as Saint Paul says. They have kept the Faith. And the merited crown that awaited them has now been awarded to them. Their names may not be known to us on earth, but they are known in the Book of Life in Heaven. These are the people, now, who glorify God for eternity. But these are the same ones who glorified God in their lives. Maybe they were not the ones who were outstanding, heroic persons; but rather, they were the ordinary saints, as opposed to the extraordinary ones - the ordinary saints, like you and me. They were the ones who were husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, the ones who were students, the ones who did their work in the way that God wanted them to.

We stop to ask ourselves: "How does one become a saint?" It begins, as we hear in the Book of Revelation, by being sealed with the seal of the living God. Each one of us has received that seal; each one of us has been baptized into Jesus Christ, and the seal of the living God has been placed upon us. From the day that you are baptized, and for the rest of eternity, there is a seal, a mark, upon your soul. It will be evident, both in Heaven and in hell, who was baptized. It will be very clear who has the seal of the living God.

But it is not enough just to say, "I am baptized, therefore, I am going to Heaven." It does not work that way. We know that we can lose grace. We know that we can fall away from God. We need, then, to ask ourselves: "What is next?" We need to strive for holiness. Saint John tells us in the second reading today that we are going to be like Christ. "What we will be," he says, "has not yet come to light, but we know that when it does we will be like Him, for we will see Him as He is." We will be molded to Christ; we will be transformed into Christ. But that transformation begins now. If we are going to live a good Christian life, even just to truly call ourselves Christian people, it means that we need to have time set aside every single day for prayer, that we need to be developing that relationship with Jesus Christ, that we need to become more like Him in our day-to-day lives.

What would that look like? That looks just like the Beatitudes; that is the life of Christ encapsulated in nine little statements. That is what we need to be about: striving for that kind of holiness. But, on a practical level, to be a saint is very simple: it is to pray every day, it is to live a moral life, it is to stay very close to the Sacraments: to get to Mass, to get to Confession regularly. But in the day-to-day, minute-to-minute lives that we are all called to live, to be a saint is all encapsulated in one little term: obedience. It is just that simple: obedience to the duties of our state in life and to do those duties with the greatest amount of love that we can do them with. In doing that we will be saints.

To say that we are to be obedient to the duties of our state in life is to be obedient, first and foremost, to our baptismal vows, where we rejected Satan and we said "yes" to God. That encapsulates those points that I have already mentioned: to pray, to live a moral life, to frequent the Sacraments. For those who are married, it is to be faithful to your marriage vows - completely faithful to them -loving that other person (whom you sometimes do not feel like loving very much) and making sure that you are placing that person as the priority, pouring yourself out for your children, as well. And for the children, that means being obedient to your parents. It means being the best student that you can be, doing your work to the best of your ability - not complaining, not whining, not throwing your books on the floor and doing things like that, not putting them in your backpack and telling Mom that you already did your homework when you really did not. It means to do your chores. It means to clean your room and do all the things you are expected to do, and to do it in the best way that you can do it. So, again, that means willingly and even joyfully, not kicking and screaming, not complaining. And that does not only go for the kids, that goes for the adults as well. All the duties of our state in life, not to kick and moan and scream about them, but to accept them and to offer that up in union with Christ. It is to mold ourselves to be like Him.

So when we think about it, we have these extraordinary saints, the ones whose names we all know, and we could say that, in essence, they are like Our Lord in His public life. These are the ones who did great things. God worked miracles through them. He used them to bring conversions of many thousands of people, sometimes. He preached through them. He touched people's lives through them. But most people are not going to be that way. That was only three years of Our Lord's life. What happened for the first thirty? They were hidden.

And so if you think about it, a very small percentage of the Christian population is going to be extraordinary saints. The vast majority is going to be likened to the hidden life of Christ. They are going to be the unknown saints - but people who are in love with Jesus Christ, people who are striving in their day-to-day lives to live the Faith that they profess. That is what we are called to, each and every one of us. If God wants us to be extraordinary saints, then we need to be obedient to that and do His Will. But for most, He is calling us to live like that hidden life, to live a family life, to live a life of heroic love shown in little things. That is the way that Christ is asking each of us to become a saint: to do what we are supposed to do in the best way that we can. And in that we will be molded into Jesus Christ in this life so that we will be prepared to become like Him in the next, to see Him face-to-face and be transformed into Christ, to be one of those who have indeed survived the period of great trial and have washed our robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb."

-- From a homily by Fr Robert Altier, ocds (1 November 2001)

You need to be serious about your faith

"The reading we heard today from the Book of the Prophet Malachi [Malachi 3:13-20] is very important. It is a very famous reading because Jesus refers to it in talking about John the Baptist and what would happen before the time of the coming of the Lord. Yet, we see it in a different way as well. We can certainly understand the reading in today's present context, with people saying, "What good is it to serve the Lord? Why should we hold Him in awe? Why pray? What difference does it make anyway? After all, those who are evildoers, those who are steeped in sin, they have dollars coming out of their ears! Bucks everywhere! Power and authority and all kinds of prestige! Yet, they fly right in the face of God! And then, if you try to serve God nothing works. You just get stomped on and trampled, you get dragged through the mud and, uh, what good is it to serve God?" Then we can look at it and say, "Just look through society! You cannot tell the difference between the ones who serve the Lord and the ones who do not, most of the time!" That is precisely the point that God is making through Malachi. It is what happened a couple of thousand years ago and it is what is happening again.

But the Day of the Lord is coming, and it is going to come with fire. It is going, as the Lord says, to burn all the evildoers and it will leave them neither root nor branch. Our Lady made very clear at Akita that when the time of the purification comes it will happen by fire falling from the sky and it will kill the greater part of humanity. Every single person in the state of mortal sin will die and some, who are in the state of grace, also will die. The Day of the Lord is coming and it will, indeed, burn like a fire. It will destroy all evildoers and it will be very clear those who serve the Lord and those who do not.

So we need to be faithful to Him. That is the point that is made also in Malachi, it says: "Then, those who serve the Lord spoke, and the Lord listened attentively." The Lord hears your prayers; do not ever doubt that. Do not ever question whether the Lord hears your prayers. He does not always answer them the way you think that He ought. And He certainly does not always answer them in the time frame that you think you have laid out for Him - as if we are going to play God and tell Him how He ought to do what we want Him to do. He is God; we are not. Part of the test of our faith, as well as of our hope and of our charity, is that we have to keep going back.

In the Gospel reading [Luke 11:5-13], we hear about the man who will get what he wants, not because of friendship but because of persistence. We need to keep going to the Lord. It is not just a matter of saying, "Lord, listen, this is what I want. If I get it, well then, I am happy; and if I do not, well then, God must not listen to my prayers and I am useless. Why should I do this anymore?" But rather, it is a matter that we have to be able to show how desperately we want union with Christ. Now, that is a hard concept for most of us. Most of us sit back with this romantic idea of how nice it would be to be united with the Lord. But, we are not really willing to do what it will cost to get there: the struggles and the sufferings, the detachments, and all of the problems that will arise.

But the only way that we are going to survive these next times is if we pray and if we are united to the Lord. So, let the word to the wise be sufficient: You best pray earnestly to the Lord. "Seek and you will find; knock and it will be opened; ask and you will receive." But you must be earnest about it. We cannot be doing any of this flippant prayer stuff anymore. We cannot be going to prayer just rambling on aimlessly, talking to ourselves and really paying no attention to God. We need to be earnest, or else we are going to be like the evildoers who say, "This is useless. Why should I keep this up? What good is it doing me to serve the Lord because things are only getting worse."

Know today that things are going to get worse - things are going to get much worse in the very near future. And do not think it is because God is not hearing your prayers; it is because there is a purification that has begun and this is going to culminate only on the Day of the Lord, when He comes with fire. So prepare yourself because only those who are faithful to the Lord will survive. Only those who are true to the Lord are going to have the grace necessary to be able to make it through what is coming. And so you need to be serious about your faith.

Right now, we cannot see much of a difference between those who worship God and those who do not. That is a pretty sad statement for us who worship God. In this society, if we cannot see the difference between those who serve God and those who do not, we are not doing what we ought to be doing. That means we have become like everyone else. That distinction had better become very clear very quickly because the Day of the Lord is coming with fire. We need to be prepared. There is only one way that we will survive, that is, if we are united with Our Lady and with her Son. That is the only way. Prepare yourself with prayer, with fasting, with repentance, with penance. Unite yourself to Jesus Christ because the Day of the Lord is coming."

-- From a homily by Fr Robert Altier, ocds (11 October 2001)

We must remain vigilant

"Saint Paul, in his Letter to the Romans, tells us that just as sin came into the world through one man, so righteousness comes into the world through one man; that through one act of disobedience, all sinned, so through one act of obedience, all will become righteous. Now, it is not quite as simple as that. On the one hand, it is true that because Adam sinned, every single person born into the world - except Our Lady, conceived without sin - is conceived with Original Sin. It is not something that we have a choice in; it is something that is passed on. It is something that we receive as an inheritance from our first parents. And so it is truly the case that every single person is born into sin because of the disobedience of one.

Where the difference comes is that the obedience of Christ is enough to more than make up for all sin. But that one has to be a choice. In other words, we have no choice with regard to Original Sin, but we have to make a choice with regard to grace. Grace abounds and it is there to make up for all sin, and even more. But it is not simply automatic. It is not like Original Sin, where everybody who is born has it; rather, it is something that we have to make a choice about.

Therefore, the Lord tells us what that is going to look like for us. When we choose Christ, we have to make some adjustments in our lives. He tells us that we have to be like servants awaiting the master's return from a wedding. We do not know when the Master is going to arrive to call each one of us. We do not know when He is going to come back the second time. It seems pretty evident (if we look at it from our perspective now) that He probably did not come in the first or second watch. So we are probably into the third watch by now. It is getting late and the Lord is delayed in coming, if you will, therefore we have to make sure that we are vigilant on His arrival. We have to make sure that we do not say, "Well, since the Master is delayed in His return, then we can eat and drink and abuse the servants (and do all the other things that He talks about in another Gospel) because we do not know where He is. We do not know when He is coming." We were ready if He would have come at a certain time, but maybe the world is not so ready anymore. We need to be very careful that we maintain that vigilance, that we know we are simply waiting for the Master and we need to be prepared for when He comes.

Once we make the choice to say, "Yes, I want to be part of that righteousness of Christ. I want to accept and to receive the grace that He has won for me," it is not enough just to be able to say that once. Once we say that, then we need to live according to that grace. That means to maintain the virtue, to remain vigilant waiting for the Master to return. That is a daily situation - every moment of every day. For us who believe, for those who have made that choice, now we need to live the choice that we have made.

The grace is there and Saint Paul tells us that the grace is there so that we can reign with Him. If we are going to reign with Him, while we share in that reign even in this life, it is ultimately in the next. And the only way that is going to happen is if we remain vigilant. If the Master finds us doing our duty when He returns, if He finds us ready to open the door immediately when He comes and knocks, then we will be blessed. He tells us that He will put on an apron, seat us at table, and proceed to wait on us. That is, to seat us in the heavenly banquet and to take care of everything.

In the meantime, we are His servants. He has given us a job to do and we are expected to do it. If He seems to delay in coming, we still know exactly what our job is and we need to keep doing it. Then, when the Master arrives, if He finds that we have been doing our work, that we are on duty, that we continue to do the work and He finds us doing what we should when He arrives, blessed will those servants be."

-- From a homily by Fr Robert Altier, ocds (23 October 2001)

** Fr Robert Altier is one of the holiest priest I've ever met. He used to be associate pastor at St Agnes Catholic Church in St Paul, Minnesota. I remember many years ago, if you went to Confession to him, you could expect to wait in line an hour, sometimes more, in the middle of the week. His homilies, never prepared in advanced, were always a spiritual treat for hungry souls. Many, many people have benefited from his sound advice, charitable admonitions, and humility.