Pastor's Desk

The parable of the Talents shows us, in a way, how God judges us and what we choose to do with the gifts he has given us. The lesson within about those gifts, the mistakes we can make in how we use them, and what we learn from those mistakes is the focus of this homily.
 

In today's Gospel Jesus is reflecting on how He and his teaching has been rejected by many of the learned teachers and leaders of his society while many of the desperate and lowly have embraced him. He offers a prayer of praise to the Father for hiding the revelation from the wise and learned but giving it to the childlike. It is one of many times that Jesus uses the image of a child to depict what true discipleship is, and that one must become like a child to enter the kingdom.

Thus, it is important to understand what Jesus means in His demand that we become like children, for certainly He did not mean to be childish. The Jesuit spiritual writer, Anthony DeMello captures it well: "The first quality that strikes one when one looks into the eyes of a child is its innocence, its lovely inability to lie or wear a mask or to pretend to be anything other than what it is...Only the adult human being is able to be one thing and pretend to be another."

Similarly, as the child's innocence is without pretense, so too the child does not look at others through the prejudiced labels of race, class, religion, beauty, wealth, etc, that it later is taught to use. The child only sees the naked humanity of others and how they treat him with love or not. This is the innocence Jesus says we must have to be open to the Gospel and enter the kingdom of God. Father DeMello asks the question: "How much of the innocence of childhood do you still retain, is there anyone today in whose presence you can be simply and totally yourself, as nakedly open and innocent as a child?"

If we must honestly admit to the loss of this innocence, we must honestly reflect on how we lost it by the false ways we were taught we had to acquire certain things and be a certain way to be acceptable to society and our families. We must face the ways our loss of our own self worth has blinded us to the humanity of others, whom we have come to view through the lens of the prejudices we were taught. If we see the price we have paid in the loss of that innocence, we will see that the demand to become like a child to enter the kingdom of God is not a poetic metaphor Jesus liked to use, but a necessary step in rediscovering our true selves healing our relationships with others.
 

Fr. Bill of the Shrine of the Sacred Heart, Baltimore Maryland Homily:

Are we being nourished and are we nourishing each other? On this feast we celebrate our belief that in the sacrament of the Eucharist the Risen Lord offers Himself to us as the source of nourishment and strength to live out our call to be His community of disciples.

It is also an invitation to use this sacrament as a prism to view our lives and look at all the ways God nourishes us and provides what we need to meet the challenges of life.  Just as Moses in today's reading from Deuteronomy called Israel to remember all the ways God sustained them and delivered them in their journey to freedom, and always provided the sustenance they needed.

Yet the offer of the Risen Lord to give Himself to us as the Bread of Life, also poses a challenge to us to examine if we truly understand what we need to nourish our hearts and souls as human beings. It is a challenge to assess if we are indeed getting that nourishment, or if we need to make the changes in our lives necessary to finding that true nourishment for our hearts and souls.

We are called to look at the relationships in our lives... and ask if they have the taste of the Bread of Life?  Do they nourish us and help us develop our humanity or do they drain us and stunt our growth? We are called to examine our pursuit of material things and career goals... and ask if our pursuits are feeding us or draining us? We are called to examine our pursuit of all the things we think we need to take care of ourselves... and ask if this pursuit is leaving us with no self left to care for?

Indeed, can we discern what we really need most to nourish our humanity and to enable us to nourish each other? Are we willing to make whatever changes are necessary to find what really will nourish us, like a starving person will do whatever is necessary to get the food they need. Corpus Christi faces us with the question of are we being nourished and are we nourishing each other?
 

To Whom do you Pray?
When you pray, to Whom do you imagine yourself speaking, and what are the feelings conjured up in your heart?  In the celebration of the Trinity we are celebrating our central belief of what is the nature of the God we worship. Yet this central core belief of Christian faith is for most Christians an abstract theological formulation that is the plaything of theologians and philosophers, and which has no real existential connection to how they approach and experience God.

We need to get back in touch with the experience of God to which we are invited by gift of the Spirit given us by the Risen Lord in Pentecost. The first disciples were monotheistic Jews who believed in the radical Oneness of the God Who created the world and Who revealed Himself to Abraham. In the Resurrection they experienced that this God had expressed Himself in the person of Jesus through Whom He took our humanity and experience into Himself. With the gift of the Spirit in Pentecost they experienced the presence and power of God drawing them into the intimacy of love that Jesus said He shared with the Father and which Hew would share with them.

Thus, St.Paul said, "We have been given the Spirit that allows us to call God Father! " In celebrating the Trinity, we are called to embrace the experience of allowing the Spirit, which is the gift of the Risen Lord to draw us into the transforming intimacy of Love that Jesus shares with the Father. Thus, today's feast is not about affirming an abstract theological formulation, but about daring to believe that through power of the Spirit, the Risen Jesus is inviting us to joyfully embrace the intimacy of Love in which the Creator of the universe wants to embrace us as a Daddy and Mommy embrace their child. Is this the God to Whom you are speaking when you pray?
 

Refuse any Excuse to Give up on Love.
As Jesus addressed His disciples before His passion, He tells them that if they would be his friends they must obey His commandments. The commandment He always gave them was that they should love one another as He has loved them. But what does it mean to command love?

Our culture teaches us to approach love in a very passive way. Love is something that happens to us. Jesus reminds His friends that love is at heart something we decide to do in giving ourselves to the good of others  Love is not something we fall into or out of. Love is something we decide to do or decide to stop doing.

Jesus issues this command as he is about to refuse any excuse to give up on the love that will soon lead Him to His passion and death. In John's gospel Jesus' refusal to stop loving no matter the cost, is contrasted to the excuses His disciples found to give up on love in denying Him and running away. Today's Gospel calls us to honestly look at the excuses we use to give up on love, to walk away from our commitments of love and the sacrifices they demand. We are called to remember that to love as Jesus loved is to find no excuse to give up on love, no matter the cost it demands of us.

View the full Liturgy of the Word: https://theshrine.org/virtualparish/online-worship/may-17-2020

 

We can't return to life as it was.
Today's feast marks the end of the special period after the Resurrection when Jesus appeared to His disciples to reveal the truth of the Resurrection and give them their mission as His church.  He teaches them that His resurrection is not about returning to life as it was, but the beginning of God's transformation of life and the world into what God calls us to be. In His going to the "right hand of the Father" and sending them the Holy Spirit, He will empower them to be His witnesses in leading others into the future God wants to create. We too are given the call that was given to the disciples in that experience of the Ascension: stop trying to return to a past that cannot be or to keep the present from changing, but be not afraid to let go and move into the future with all of its uncertainty and challenges trusting that the Risen One will be there to empower us to deal with all those challenges. The person of faith must look to the future not with fear and dread but with hope and anticipation, trusting that Christ will be at the heart of all that the future brings.

 

Integrity, not perceived results, are what determines our work's value. Fifth Sunday of Easter 2020

For several weeks after Easter our liturgies include a reading from the first letter of St. Peter who is writing to encourage the early church community that is undergoing persecution and rejection.

He reminds them that they are suffering because of what is right about them and the witness they are giving to the Gospel of Christ. He calls them to be faithful to the witness they are giving and not give into despair because of the rejection they receive. He calls them to remember who they are, a royal priesthood and a people set apart. They are called to be faithful to the witness they give and not judge themselves by the results they get.

We need to ponder this message in our own hearts, as we are the product of a culture that teaches us to judge ourselves and others by the achievements and results we get in our efforts and relationships. When we don't get the results we hoped for in our efforts and the responses we hoped for in our relationships with others, we easily judge ourselves and our commitments to others as failures, and we are often tempted to give up.

We need to remember and embrace the challenge Peter gave to his community: The value of what we offer in loving commitments and service to others is determined by the integrity with which we live those commitments and not by the responses of others or the results we get.

View the full Liturgy of the Word: https://theshrine.org/virtualparish/online-worship/may-10-2020

 

Homily by Fr. William Au for April 26, 2020 | For the Gospel of Luke 24:13-35
Life is more powerful than death.
Jesus helps his disciples understand why the Messiah had to die, why things had to go the way they did.  The reason lies in the nature of the struggle between Good and Evil itself: the Darkness must attack the Light.  Jesus could not be who He was without being the lightning rod for all the Darkness and Evil to strike at, but in His resurrection He would be God's instrument to destroy the power of Darkness and Death at its core.

He is the Promise that when Darkness and Evil have done their worse,God will reveal that: life is more powerful than death, love more powerful than hate, mercy more powerful than vengeance, and spirit more powerful than physical violence.

View the full Liturgy of the Word for April 26, 2020: theshrine.org/virtualparish/online-worship/april-26-2020
 

Homily by Fr. William Au for Good Friday, April 10, 2020 | For the Gospel of John 18:1 - 19:42

Love is the most powerful force in the universe. It can change the nature of things. This Good Friday we focus on the Cross which embodies "that mystery that renders us lonely in a thousand ways" (Karl Rahner). Why? To celebrate the transubstantiation of our tears. We celebrate the One, who in the Love that fills the Heart of God, took up that Cross , and offers to transubstantiate our tears of sorrow and despair , as he changed the tears of Peter into tears of joy and hope.

View the full Liturgy of the Word for Good Friday, April 10, 2020: theshrine.org/virtualparish/online-worship/april-10-2020

Homily for the Gospel of John 13:1-15
Jesus used an ancient ritual of hospitality to teach his disciples the meaning of the sacrament and mission He gave them. "I have given you an example. What I have done for you , you must do for each other." The church that is focused only on rules and strict traditions, but is not welcoming deserves to be empty.

View the full Liturgy of the Word for Holy Thursday, Mass of the Lord's Supper, April 9, 2020: theshrine.org/virtualparish/online-worship/april-09-2020

Don't you find it irritating when people answer your question with another question? In this week's Gospel Martha complains to Jesus, "Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died!" It is really a question:"Lord why do we have to experience this heart ache?" Jesus answers her question with another question: "Do you believe?"

We can totally identify with Martha's question. Yet everything actually depends on how we answer Jesus' question.

Homily following the Gospel reading of John 11:1-45
 

What kind of people will we decide to be, and what kind of society will we choose to create?

"When will things get back to normal?" This is the question so many ask as we go through a difficult and challenging time of dealing with a pandemic that has disrupted the routines of life for the whole world, and when we also face the social disruption and turmoil created by profound issues of injustice and racism and inequality that have gone unaddressed in our society. For most people who yearn for life to get back to "normal," it means getting back to a life without the turmoil and disruption and uncertainty that faces us now. Yet such a "normal life" is really a temporary illusion. In today's Gospel Jesus warns his friends that if they would be His disciples they can not expect a "normal" life as we would have it, for they will know opposition and persecution and suffering for witnessing to Him and the truth of the Gospel message.

For ourselves, we are challenged to face what every generation must face, that crisis and tragedy and struggle is a "normal" part of life. When crisis does come to us, we are challenged to not play the victim but to ask the most important questions: What do we need to learn in this situation? and How will we choose to respond, who will we choose to be in the face of this situation? The crises that strip away the illusion of normality are, at heart, the most important opportunities in which we must learn what is most important in our lives and decide what kind of people we are going to be and what kind of society we are going to struggle to make.

If we would follow the call of Christ, we must not play the victim before our present moment of crisis. We must by His grace ask the most important questions and give our answers: What do we need to learn from this crisis? And, How will we choose to respond? What kind of people will we decide to be, and what kind of society will we choose to create?

God is waiting for our answers.
 

Homily by Fr. William Au for Easter Sunday, April 12, 2020 | For the Gospel of John 20: 1-9

"Death will one day take life from you. So while you can, take the death from your life."(Elizabeth Kubler Ross). Easter invites us to allow the Risen One to open us to experience that Death is not the ultimate mystery, God is. If we accept the Risen Lord's invitation to embrace the Divine Love that raised Him from the dead, we can experience the power of Death being driven from our hearts and become fully alive in the face of Death.
 

I wish to speak to you today on the painful and disturbing topic of the crisis of child sexual abuse that again confronts us as a church in the wake of the Pennsylvania grand jury report of the scope of child sexual abuse by clergy and the extent of the cover-up by church authorities over decades. This report has particular relevance and causes direct personal hurt and anger for us in the Archdiocese of Baltimore because of the involvement of our former Archbishop, Cardinal Keeler in covering up clergy abuse in the diocese of Harrisburg. This in turn only serves to refocus concern on the sexual abuse of children in our archdiocese and the issue of how it was addressed by church leadership here.

What I have to say to you today is difficult and may be disturbing or even offensive to some of you, but it is my duty as your pastor to address this issue and to invite you to engage in an open and honest parish discussion on this issue which deeply affects all of us as a Church. How this issue is dealt with will determine whether the Church in this country can go on to be a moral force for social good or continue to lose all moral authority and credibility in a quagmire of hypocrisy and corruption. In what I have to say I speak only for myself and from my experience in over forty-three years of ordained ministry as a priest.

The root meaning of “crisis” is a time that demands a judgement and decision that determines the future of things. In order for us to discern the judgements and decisions that must be made, it is necessary that we understand the true nature of the crisis that confronts us, and the realities in which it is rooted. Thus, it is imperative that we, as a Church, recognize that what we confront is not a crisis of sex, but a crisis of trust. The fact that there were pedophile priests, who took advantage of their position of trust to shamefully and criminally sexually abuse the most innocent and vulnerable among us, would have been a most painful and shocking scandal under any circumstances. But what made these inexcusable actions into the greatest crisis of credibility to confront the Church in modern times is the way these incidents were handled by Church authorities. Diocesan bishops and the circle of clergy who ran the diocesan bureaucracy systematically sought to cover-up these crimes and to buy the silence of victims or intimidate accusers into silence. Their actions often perpetuated the continuance of abuse by simply moving offending priests, rather than addressing their actions. Their over-riding objective was always to “protect the Church”, which apparently justified to them the further victimization of those abused, and the total disregard of truth and justice.

Thus, we must recognize and be willing to address the fact that the crisis that today confronts us is rooted in the corruption of power and the culture of governance in the Church itself, and the clerical culture of privilege and secrecy that supports it. The logic of corruption that underlies the creation of this situation is as simple as it is reprehensible: To protect the faith is to protect the Church. To protect the Church is easily translated into protecting the position of those in leadership, who see themselves as the Church. Thus, the protection of the Church quickly becomes the protection of their “corporate asses and assets.” This mentality is only further entrenched by the careerism that motivates too many in positions of Church governance who know that advancement requires protecting authority and its corporate interests. The tragic irony of this governing mentality is that in its obsession with protecting the authority and reputation of the Church and the clergy, it has resulted in doing the opposite and is now threatening to strip the Church and its leaders of all moral authority.

Twenty years ago, when I was serving as Director of Public Relations for the Archdiocese, it was a time when the stories of clergy sexual abuse were beginning to become much more public in the wake of the crisis of clergy sexual abuse erupting in the Archdiocese of Boston under the tenure of then Cardinal Law. It was also a time when discussion in the national bishops’ conference began to focus on the reality that any priest found guilty of such actions needed to be permanently removed from ministry. I wrote a proposal for the Bishops urging that we needed to take a more proactive effort to communicate to clergy and lay leaders what the Archdiocese was doing in regard to handling cases of accusations of abuse by clergy and educating people on the issue . I argued that the core issue we needed to address was not sex but trust, that to avoid losing the trust of our people we needed to be more proactive in communicating with them on what had happened locally and what policies the Archdiocese was going to follow to deal with the issue. I was subsequently informed by the then Chancellor (now a bishop of another diocese) that we could not do this as there were too many people who could sue us, and if it appeared like we were trying to make ourselves look good they might get angry and do so. Needless to say, this attitude, while reflecting the concerns of attorneys, was not to prove to be a way of keeping the trust of the people of the Archdiocese.

Also at the heart of the failure of Church leadership to deal with this crisis has been the refusal of personal accountability by those in leadership. However, hopefully this reality is now being changed by the pressure brought about by civil legal authorities being more willing to investigate Church leadership, and by Pope Francis clearly signalling that the highest levels of the hierarchy are no longer exempt from that accountability. When Cardinal Law was compelled to resign as Archbishop of Boston, he moved (out of subpoena range) to Rome where he was given a place of honor as one of the American cardinals on the Congregation for Bishops. There was no public criticism or issue of his responsibility raised by the members of the U.S. Bishops’ Conference. Many people concerned about the issue of clergy sexual abuse in this country were scandalized at his continued position of respect and protection in the Church’s governance.

In contrast, Pope Francis’ firm action in disciplining Cardinal MaCarrick, and calling the bishops of the Church to be personally accountable, seems to signal the dawning of a new day of awareness and action on this issue of world-wide concern. In the wake of Pope Francis’ actions against Cardinal McCarrick, for the first time, American bishops have begun to follow his example in publicly addressing the responsibility of their fellow bishops. Archbishop Lori was among those showing leadership in his public statement on accountability for those in Church leadership positions, and I support him in this.

What remains to be seen is whether this flurry of new recognition of responsibility previously ignored will continue to grow and make a practical difference in making change in the culture of governance in the Church.

If this is to happen, it will require the willingness of the people of the Church, to recognize that they are the Church and exercise their responsibility (your responsibility) to demand such change. To let their pastors and bishops know their feelings and the transparency in Church governance they have a right to expect. Until the bishops and clergy who have run the diocesan bureaucracies in the spirit of the clerical culture of power I have described are replaced by those of a different spirit there will be no change.

In the mean-time there is still the question of where we (you and I) turn to find nurture for our faith and light to guide our way. For me, I have found the last forty-three years of ministry to be a journey of wonder and pain calling me to ever deeper levels of realization of the mystery of God in my life. It is a journey in which I have become clear that the Church is a means not an end. Through the Church I have learned the Gospel of Jesus the Christ. I have been honored with a ministry that has led me to meet so many people on the deepest levels of our human struggle and the mystery of God’s presence in that struggle. And in the ways and times the Church has hurt or betrayed my trust, I have grown to know my faith has always been in Christ and not the Church. This is not the first time in its long history that the Church has lost the confidence and trust of its people, though for us it is perhaps the worst time in our experience. When the Church has been able to recover from such periods, it was because of those whose faith in Christ allowed them to change the Church. I believe that is our task and challenge. We cannot be passive victims expecting the hierarchy to make it all better. The people of the Church (laity and clergy together in equal partnership) must demand and make that change. We must not be afraid to push back and hold accountable those who are given leadership roles which are meant to be focused on service. We must be willing to take the responsibility to shape this thing which has shaped us, the Church.

In conclusion, as a student of history, I would leave this reflection as all such reflections should end, with a story. In the year 1801 the Papal Secretary of State, Cardinal Consalvi, went to Paris to negotiate a Concordat (a treaty governing Church-State relations) with Napoleon Bonaparte. As was his way, Napoleon wanted to make the rules of the conversation clear from the start. So when Consalvi entered the room for their first meeting Napoleon greeted him by saying: “Of course you know, Your Eminence, I have the power to destroy the Church!” To which Consolvi responded: “But Emperor, not even the priests have been able to do that!” After forty-three years of ministry I am betting my heart on the hope that Consalvi is still right! I invite you to join me in that bet.

It is an honor to be your pastor, and I will always strive to be worthy of your trust. Thank you for your kind indulgence in allowing me this honest expression of my heart to you today. God bless you all.

We have long known know what to do to stem city violence but lacked the will to do it.

The French have a saying: "The more things change, the more they remain the same." In the wake of the heartbreaking events that have troubled our city following the tragic death of Freddie Gray while in police custody, there has been a renewed public conversation about the need to address the systemic social issues and conditions which cause and find expression in such civil disturbances. To many in our community this conversation must call to mind another expression from French: "déjà vu."

Six years ago I participated in an effort of Baltimore clergy (the Baltimore Interfaith Coalition) to address these issues in response to a severe spike in killings in the city This was not the first such effort of city clergy nor would it be the last. At that time we raised the issue that, despite all the programs of recent years, our city continued to be one of the most violent in the nation, with one of the highest per capita rates of children shot and killed. We also stated that it was not possible to address the violence in our city without addressing two central realities: the rise of gangs which offer our young people a sense of belonging and protection which they have not been able to find elsewhere; and the illegal drug trade which supports the growth of gang turf wars and seduces many of our young people who experience no hope of honest employment and economic opportunity. Nor could we pretend that the drug trade and gangs were only Baltimore's problem when it was obvious that people in the suburbs were getting their drugs from the city and that Baltimore was as central to the state's illegal economy as it was to the legal one.

Moreover, we recognized that the pervasive violence that affects our city is more than just the product of a few violent individuals and groups. It has in fact become a cultural problem, for it is supported by the attitudes of a subset of society that has accepted this violence as inevitable and even acceptable. It is a culture in which the value of human life has been cheapened in the eyes of too many young people who, seeing no value to their own lives, think little of taking the lives of others.

We also identified specific areas of action that needed to be the focal point of effort by all areas of community leadership. These were certainly not unique insights of ours but a statement of what was painfully obvious to all. These included:

1) Calling for our city and state authorities to explain their strategies for addressing the illegal drug trade and for them to petition the federal government for an increased investigation of the Baltimore drug trade and the corrupt political and economic elements that enable it

2) Demanding that our state legislators treat drug addiction as a public health problem rather than a criminal issue. (This did not mean legalizing drug sales or usage but placing addicts in treatment or maintenance programs rather than jail.)

3) Providing meaningful job opportunities for ex-offenders.

4) Most importantly, increasing support for mentoring, educational and recreational programs for intervention in the lives of young people most at risk of being drawn into gangs and the drug trade.

Six years later, events have only served to demonstrate how easily community concern and outrage dissipates into a lack of any significant action to address the underlying issues which have been long recognized as the heart of the problem. Instead of efforts to reduce the power of gangs, we read how one gang practically ran the city jail, and city leaders felt the necessity to recruit the help of gangs to restore order to the streets. Instead of effective strategies against the drug trade and meaningful intervention into the lives of our young people, we witness nationally televised interviews in which our city youth eloquently testify to a lack of hope and opportunity and how the drug trade is the only option for some. Moreover, the anger and distrust expressed toward police shows how all other issues are exacerbated by the loss of human and community relationship-building between law enforcement agencies and the hardest-pressed neighborhoods they seek to serve and protect. The challenge before us is not to identify the systemic issues feeding violence and injustice in our city. They are known.

The challenge is whether we have the faith and courage for a renewed effort to recognize the truth of our situation, to be brutally honest in studying its causes and to forge a new community-wide commitment to a more creative and effective response. We need more than prayer walks and marches, as important as these may be in helping to create community solidarity and aware ness. We need the religious, community and political leadership to speak truth to power and to continue to demand meaningful action when the cameras are gone and the inevitable cynicism which has crushed hope in the past seeks to push things back to business as usual. We have all been part of the history in which we have decried the violence and injustice in our city, while the violence continued to increase. We dare not now be mere victims of our history and allow fear to convince us that this history has exhausted the possibilities of our future.

Thus, the question before us is will things be different this time, or will the cameras leave, the prayer walks taper off and we return to what has tragically been accepted as normal? The cynical adage: "The more things change, the more they stay the same" must be among the saddest words ever spoken. But sadder still are those who allow those words to become their fate.

In the wake of the terrorist attacks in France the issue of free speech has become central to the discussion of the threat of terrorism and the relationship between Western societies and the Muslim world and the place of Islam in democratic societies. Unfortunately, much of this discussion has been premised upon an unbalanced understanding of free speech, and also fails to address important underlying questions of how Western societies view Muslims and how Muslims perceive how they are characterized in Western societies.

Free speech is absolutely essential to a democratic pluralistic society. Yet the right of free speech has both a legal and moral dimension. Legally we must allow individuals and groups to espouse their views no matter how vile, ignorant or bigoted they are because we cannot trust government with the power of censorship. At the same time, however, a pluralistic democratic society requires the support of a civil discourse which allows the airing of differences while supporting the dignity and respect to which all citizens are entitled, and which is necessary for all groups to feel enfranchised and vested in society.

Thus, the abuse of free speech to promote hateful and bigoted images of people or to insult their religion, culture or race can only serve to undermine democratic society. Thus, while such hateful abuses of free speech must be legally allowed, they cannot go unaddressed morally. For unless the leadership of all sectors of society strongly repudiate such abuse of free speech, it can only serve to alienate certain groups as they seek to participate in democratic society.

This is the point Pope Francis was making when he recently said free speech is not without limits, and you cannot use the right of free speech to abuse whole groups of people without inevitable negative social consequences. Free speech is not just a legal right; it is a moral obligation to maintain the civil discourse that alone can support a pluralistic democratic society.

The terrorists who committed the atrocities in France justified their actions as a response to what they said was an insulting portrayal of the Prophet Mohammed in a French magazine. Such violence is never justified and was condemned by Muslim leaders, as Muslims, Christians and Jews marched in solidarity against such criminal acts.

Yet, the reaction in Europe and the United States has been too often shaped by those who would promote an extreme anti-Muslim bigotry, such as the Rev. Franklin Graham who characterizes Islam as a religion of violence, and others who argue that Islam is not compatible with democracy and that the ultimate aim of Muslims is to impose Sharia law on Western society. Such lies were reinforced by Fox News giving false reports of London and Paris having “no go zones”, where Muslims were enforcing Sharia law and local police dare not enter. As a Roman Catholic well aware of the history of bigotry in which Catholicism was similarly slandered as incompatible with American democracy, and a threat to the religious liberty of others, I can well sympathize with the feelings of my Muslim friends and colleagues facing the same false distortion of their religion.

The tragic irony is that the vilification of Islam in Western media and societies only serves the interests of extremists who want to convince Muslims that the West is at war with Islam. When we see angry protests in Muslim countries against the cartoon characterizations of the Prophet Mohammed, is it correct for us to simply interpret this as a sign that Islam is not compatible with democracy? Or is the more insightful interpretation that these Muslim protestors are angry because they see Western society as belittling their religion and therefore them as people? For these protestors, the issue is not about free speech, it is about respect. It is about their perception of the belittling Western attitudes towards them rooted in the era of colonialism. Thus, in their reaction to Western statements about Mohammed and Islam and in our reaction to their anger, we are like two worlds not understanding what each is saying is important to them. So we see only the false face we give to the other.

If we want to see the true face of Islam in America, we must look at the vast majority of our hardworking, law-abiding Muslim neighbors who treasure our democracy. We must look, as Colin Powell said, at the tombstones in Arlington National Cemetery marked with crescent moons, alongside those marked with a cross or the Star of David. If we want to see the true face of Islam in the world, we must not just look at the secular or theocratic dictators, many of whom are in power because of the history of Western support and policies. We must also look at the youthful protestors brutally crushed in Iran, and those who filled Tahir Square in Egypt, to bring down first Mubarak, and then Morsi, because they wanted a real democracy and not a Muslim Brotherhood replacement dictator. Rather than seeing Islam as a monolithic entity with a Taliban face, we must recognize the multifaceted reality of Islam and the traditional cultures of many Muslim countries that are struggling with the adaptation to modernity which Christianity and Judaism had to previously undergo.

Many in the West have called for Muslim leaders to speak out more forcefully and collectively against the use of Islam to justify extremism, and indeed more such action is needed. However, it must also be recognized that when such actions have been taken, they have received virtually no recognition in Western media and society. In 2004, King Abdullah of Jordan, together with representatives of all branches and schools of jurisprudence of Islam issued, THE AMMAN MESSAGE, which rejected violence and extremism as incompatible with Islam. There could be no more authoritative statement on the issue as this was, yet it was virtually ignored by Western media and most people in Western countries have never heard of it. Similarly, in 2007, Muslim leaders and scholars addressed an open letter to Pope Benedict XVI and other world Christian leaders entitled A COMMON WORD BETWEEN US AND YOU, calling for interfaith cooperation to bring peace and justice to the world. Again, it received little recognition or attention in Western countries. While indeed there must be more concerted effort by Muslim leaders to publicly stand against the misuse of Islam by extremists, there must also be a greater openness in Western society to actually hear that voice.

Thus, it would be tragically sad if our debate on the importance of free speech focused only on the rights of those who would mock and insult, rather than on our moral obligation to maintain a civil discourse that embodies the right of every individual and community to respect, and which rejects the promotion of misinformation and bigoted stereotypes. Such a civil discourse is not only essential to the preservation of an inclusive pluralistic democracy for ourselves, it is also vital to our ability to create a global civil discourse essential to the creation of a peaceful global community.

Today’s gospel presents us with a subtle but important challenge. 

Jesus is confronted by his opponents with a trick question about the payment of Roman taxes, which is designed to make him look like either a collaborator or a revolutionary, depending on how he answers.  He avoids the trap with his own clever dodge to give to Caesar what is his and to God what is God’s. 

This incident is one of a series in which Jesus is confronted by his opponents in an effort to trap him or drag him into the struggle between the political/religious parties of his day (the Sadducees might be seen as the conservatives of the time and the Pharisees as the liberals).  While each of these stories are subject to different levels of interpretation and application on different religious issues, there is a common dynamic present in all of them that is the point of reflection I would like to focus on today.  That is, the pretense to dialog that motivates those who are trying to trap Jesus.  They offer an invitation to dialog but don’t really want one, as they have their established positions. 

Real dialog is a dangerous thing.  It means truly opening ourselves to the other and why they think and feel as they do.  It means being open to the impact of our words and actions on others, and therefore being open to the possibility or necessity of change in ourselves and how we say and do things.  Real dialog requires openness to change on some level.  You cannot say you want dialog and be totally closed to any change in your position or how you articulate it or act on it. 

We must also be clear here that the conflict between Jesus and his opponents presented in the Gospels is not a conflict between Christians and Jews or a comparison of Christianity and Judaism.  The conflict between Jesus and his opponents is a conflict between Jews over what is the meaning of the Biblical faith of Israel and what is the core experience of God to which the Biblical faith of Israel is meant to lead people. 

In this conflict I believe Jesus is acting in the tradition of the Hebrew prophets, insisting that the faith of Israel has nothing to do with political power, ideologies of control or protecting the institutional interests of the religious establishment. 

Rather, it has to do with a radical openness to God’s presence among us, calling us beyond where we are into an experience of God’s compassionate love for us and the necessity of our compassionate embrace in that love of all others.  What Jesus radically opposed was the reduction of religion to an ideology focused on keeping power and influence for the religious establishment rather than being God’s instrument for bringing the transformation of faith and compassion to human society.  These Gospel stories were preserved in the Christian scriptures not as a record of Jesus’ conflicts with other Jewish teachers, but as a warning and challenge to the church. 

They are a warning about how we can cling to our prejudices and preconceptions of how the world and other people are, and only pretend to be open to real dialog with others , while we are in fact closed to them or the world being anything other than what we have already decided they can be.  It is a warning that healing and life giving transformations cannot occur in those who have already determined all the possibilities in their own minds.  Such pretense to openness versus real openness is the major obstacle to our growth and healing as human beings. 

This warning and challenge is, I believe, drawn into sharp and practical focus for us as a church by the Synod on the Family that has been gathered by Pope Francis, and which is now completing its first session.  This Synod was called by Pope Francis to look honestly at how the church’s teachings and the way we implement them actually impact peoples’ lives.  As you know from the media, this Synod has become the focal point of controversy because of issues raised about the status of gay people in the church community and the issue of how we treat people who are divorced and remarried.  This controversy also reveals how quickly the battle lines between conservative and liberal factions are drawn.  It also raises the question of whether or not we as a church will allow internal ideological conflicts to keep us from the genuine dialog to which the risen Lord invites us, and in which alone we can discern how God is acting in our day to lead us to honestly encounter the humanity and human needs of all in our community and world, and how our words and actions as a church impact them. 

It seems to me that in challenging the Church to enter into this dialog, Pope Francis is also teaching us what is necessary to do this.  Francis said: “Tradition and memory of the past must help us to have the courage to open new areas to God.  Those who today always look for disciplinarian solutions, those who long for and exaggerated doctrinal “security”, those who stubbornly try to recover a past that no longer exists— they have a static, and inward directed view of things.  In this way faith becomes an ideology among other ideologies.” 

We are painfully aware of the consequences of religion being turned into a political ideology as part of the human conflict for power and control.  It is something easy to see in other peoples’ religion in the justifications for terrorism and violence, etc.  Yet the real challenge is to recognize this dynamic in our own religious community and institutions:

• Within the church we have witnessed how conservative and liberal factions can savage each other with a viciousness that shows none of the compassion of Jesus, because they are convinced that they have the real truth of their religion. 
• I have seen how church authority can handle issues of challenge or dissent without any sense of fairness or due process because they either know only disciplinarian solutions, or their sense of protecting their institutional interests dispenses with the moral obligation of fairness or due process. 
• In our church communities we have seen how those who differed with the church’s position on various moral issues or who have been divorced and remarried have found themselves treated as if they were public outcasts with no place in the church. 

In the face of this reality Francis said: “If one has all the answers to all the questions, this is proof that God is not with him.”  Instead Francis seems to be calling us to what should be the true focus of our religious faith and practice, and what should be the framework for the deliberations of the synod: “We must always consider the human person.  Here we enter into the mystery of the human being.  In life God accompanies persons, and we must accompany them starting from their situation.  It is always necessary to accompany them with mercy.” 

That is, the first concern we must have as a church must be to touch the hearts of people to proclaim God’s merciful love to them and to uphold their sense of personal self-worth.  This is the necessary basis for any dialog.  If we, as a church, do not communicate our acceptance and compassionate love for people, why should any of them care what we have to say? 

In this regard Francis said: “The Church sometimes has locked itself up in small things, small minded rules.  The most important thing is the first proclamation: Jesus Christ has saved you and the ministers of the Church must be ministers of mercy above all else.” 

This is also why Francis said: “The church can no longer insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriages and the use of contraceptive methods.  We cannot be obsessed with the transmission of a disjointed multitude of doctrines… we must find a new balance, otherwise the moral edifice of the Church will likely crumble like as house of cards.” 

His words serve to challenge us to see that to focus totally on certain issues as we have blinds us to the totality of the Church’s moral teaching, and reduces these issues to being a litmus test of loyalty to the institution and institutional policy that reflects the reduction of religion to an ideology of control.  Consequently we have witnessed the growing reality of different classes of people within the Church who feel they no longer have a place in the church because they are divorced and remarried, gay, or cannot accept a moral position of the Church on contraception, etc.

In the face of this reality which has come to dominate the inner experience and outward posture of our Church, Francis said: “The Church must be a home of all, not a small chapel that can hold only a small group of people.”  Words that proclaim that the church, and especially its shepherds, must be humble in bringing God’s mercy to the modern world, to liberate people from the arrogance, authoritarianism, and hubris of both the church and state that has made people lose a sense of their worth and God’s healing mercy and love.  Those who would argue that an open and honest dialog and re-examination of the issues confronting the Synod regarding the church’s attitudes toward gay people and divorced and remarried Catholics is undermining of the Church’s authority and the integrity of the family, would seem to me to be viewing the church as a beleaguered and threatened bureaucracy rather than as the Body of Christ , which has nothing to fear from always discerning how it can best find a way to incorporate and nurture all who look to it in need.

To accept the challenge of real dialog which Pope Francis has put before the Synod and ourselves, it is necessary that we listen to the Jesus presented to us in the Gospels.  The Jesus who always rebuked the mentality of those, who in the name of religion:

• Closed themselves off from any real dialog or encounter in the search for truth. 
• Who for the sake of certitude and self-assurance imprison themselves in very narrow definitions of the human person and human relationships.
• Who out of fear use morality and religion to justify unfair or even violent treatment of those who do not share their beliefs. 

Indeed we very much need the liberating encounter with the Jesus who was always in opposition to the religious ideologies and fundamentalisms of his day.  For he was always exposing the idolatry of their attempts to put God in a bottle and exposing the difference between believing in air-tight theological definitions and believing in the living God who is beyond all our definitions.  In the seminary I had a wise professor who always admonished us: “remember gentlemen, the church is God’s herald, not his jailor.  The Church is the herald of the Kingdom of God, the Church is not the Kingdom of God!” 

We need the transforming encounter with this Jesus:

• Who in the face of the self-righteousness of the representatives of religion rebuked their pretense to have any special hold on God’s love and mercy,
• Who in the face of the bigotry and religiously endorsed nationalism and prejudices of his day, proclaimed the worthiness of the foreigner, the pagan and the social outcast. 
• Who in reaction to those who tried to use the Scriptures as a weapon against him, taught that the Scriptures are alive to us only if we allow them to speak unfettered by our prejudices and predetermined ideas of what they must prove or have to say to us. 

This is the Jesus who always stands before us as the one who proclaims the ever greatness of God in the face of all human attempts to contain God.  Who stands as the one who proclaims the utter falsehood of all human beliefs that do not lead us to a deeper and humbler understanding of God’s compassionate love for all people.  We cannot encounter this Jesus without being challenged to see our church and our world through his eyes.  We are challenged to judge ourselves and our Church by the standard of The One who taught that the ultimate test of our faith is whether we are being led to a more humble submission to God and a more compassionate embrace of one another. 

Thus let us pray for Pope Francis and for the Synod and for ourselves as a Church community that we may be free by God’s grace to respond to God’s call to lead us beyond where we are to do what Francis has said: “We must find a new balance or else even the moral edifice of the church will collapse like a house of cards.”  As Jesus often said to his listeners: “Let those who have ears hear, let those who have eyes see!”

A Catholic Biblical scholar, Hans Walter Wolf said: “Real prophets consistently confuse people.”  Because they challenge people to reconfigure how they look at things, and how we look at things determines what we see and get out of what we hear and experience.  

Today’s Gospel — Jesus doing precisely this — tells the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican (or as my grandmother used to butcher it, the parable of the Pharisee and the republican).  It is a parable it is said that was told in response to the “self-righteous.”

The Pharisees have gotten a bad press in Christian circles because of their opposition to Jesus.  But they were the liberals of their day.  They took their religion seriously.  In the parable he is proclaiming how he has kept all the commandments and rules and followed all the rituals required of him and paid tithes on his income…  And he did.  

The publican was a despised figure and with reason.  He was a tax collector for and occupying power and was seen as traitor and public sinner.  Yet he is presented as recognizing his sin and need for God’s mercy, while the Pharisee is seen as taking credit for his righteousness before God as if he earned it, and did not deem the publican worthy of acceptance as a human being.  

Jesus says that it was the publican who went away justified – must have left a lot of his listeners scratching their heads – confused, for this turned the way they were conditioned to see things upside down.  

This parable is set in the context of multiple disputes between Jesus and his opponents — Pharisees and Sadducees.  We must be clear here: this is not a dispute between Christians and Jews or a comparison of Christianity and Judaism.  This is a fight among Jews as to what is the real inner meaning of their faith and religion—what is the core experience of God to which the biblical faith of Israel is supposed to lead people?  

In this conflict Jesus is acting in the tradition of Jewish prophets—insisting that the faith of Israel has nothing to do with political power, ideologies of control, or protecting the institutional interests of the religious establishment.  

Rather, it has to do with a radical openness to God’s presence among us—calling us beyond where we are- into an experience of God’s compassionate love for us and the necessity of our compassionate embrace in that love of all others.  ---what he radically opposed was the reduction of religion to an ideology focused on keeping power and influence for the religious establishment rather than being the God’s instrument of bringing the transformation of faith and compassion to human society. 

This conflict between Jesus and his opponents over the fundamental understanding of their religion is most important to us to reflect upon—for it is the same challenge we are facing as a church.  This fact has been brought into sharp focus by our new Pope Francis, who has said things that –like every good prophet—has confused people— because its tone and content is quite different from what our church establishment has been saying and conditioning us to hear.  (I have been asked to address this and have waited for this Sunday when the scriptures set the stage to do it)  

Francis too places before us the challenge to reconsider how we look at things as Christians and how we understand our faith and the nature and role of the church.  Time will tell what his influence will be, but I believe he is raising the same challenges as Jesus was in the gospel accounts.  For the problem Jesus was addressing is not peculiar to Judaism but is at the heart of all religions.  So let us review briefly some of the things Francis has said and hear in them the echo of the voice of Jesus:  

Francis said: "Tradition and memory of the past must help us to have the courage to open new areas to God.  Those who today always look for disciplinarian solution, those who long for an exaggerated doctrinal ‘security,’ those who stubbornly try to recover a past that no longer exists—they have a static and inward directed view of things.  In this way faith becomes an ideology among other ideologies.”  

We are already painfully aware of the consequences of religion being turned into a political ideology as part of the human conflict for power and control—it is easy to see it in other religions in the justification of terrorism or violence, etc.  

Yet the real challenge is to see this dynamic in our own religious community and institutions. 

• Within the church we have witnessed how conservative and liberal factions can savage each other with a viciousness that shows none of the compassion of Jesus - because they are convinced they are fighting for the real truth of their religion. 
• I have seen how church authority can handle issues of challenge or dissent without any sense of fairness or due process because they either know only disciplinarian approaches to being questioned or feel their need to defend the institutional interests or positions dispenses with the need for fairness or due process. 
• I have seen how the sex abuse crisis was handled without any sense of justice for the victims and then shifted to dealing with accused priests without any sense of due process.  Because in both instances the real issue was protecting corporate interests that had become identified with the church and the faith. 
• In our church communities we have seen those who differ with the church’s position on various moral issues, or who have been divorced etc., have found themselves treated   
  by laity and church officials alike as if they were public outcasts with no place in the church.  

In the face of this reality Francis said: “If one has the answers to all the questions, this is proof that that God is not with him.”  

Instead Francis seems to be calling us to what should be the true focus of our religion: “We must always consider the person.  Here we enter into the mystery of the human being.  In life, God accompanies persons, and we must accompany them starting from their situation.  It is always necessary to accompany them with mercy” That is the first concern we have as a church must be to touch the hearts of people to proclaim God’s merciful love to them and uphold their sense of personal self-worth.  This is the necessary basis for any dialog.  If we, as a church do not communicate our acceptance and compassionate love for people, why should any of them care what we have to say?  

Thus, Francis said: “The church sometimes has locked itself up in small things, small minded rules.  The most important thing is the first proclamation: Jesus Christ has saved you, and the ministers of the church must be ministers of mercy above all else.”  This is the very thing Jesus did when he addressed how the religious law was applied in ways that denied that centrality of the human person.  Such as when he was attacked for healing on the Sabbath and said: “The Sabbath was made for man not man for the Sabbath.”  

This is also why Francis said: “The church can no longer insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods…we cannot be obsessed with the transmission of a disjointed multitude of doctrines……we must find a new balance, otherwise the moral edifice of the Church will likely crumble like a house of cards.”  

His words serve to challenge us to see that to focus totally on certain issues as we have,  blinds us to the totality of the Church’s moral teaching, and reduces these issues to being a litmus test of loyalty to the institution and institutional policy that reflects the reduction of religious faith into an ideology of control:

• I have seen the results of this in the promotion of clericalism and careerism in the clergy in which many feel they must adhere to narrow sets of statements on certain issues in order to promote their careers.
• I have seen how this careerism and narrow focus has justified the abuse of power in the church.  An example you are aware of, seems to me, to be the recent actions taken against American orders of religious women, who are under church scrutiny for a number of vague charges which included, not adequately addressing the issues of gay marriage and abortion and contraception, and spending too much time addressing the needs of the poor and social justice instead.  I cannot but wonder what the saint whose name our current pope chose would have to say about such an accusation. 
   
• I have seen how this narrow obsessive focus on these issues has allowed church leaders and lay advocates to ignore Papal and church teaching on issues of war and poverty, feeling that they only need to mouth narrow statements on abortion, gay marriage and contraception in order to be good Catholics.  For example, neo-conservative Catholic advocates have justified and pushed for military action in the Middle East and even justified the use of torture, while ignoring Papal condemnations of such actions.  They have in turn criticized more liberal catholic advocates for questioning the Church’s position on gay rights, or contraception or the role of women and the use of authority, by disparaging them as “cafeteria” Catholics who want to pick and choose what they believe.  The truth is, these folks are just eating at a different cafeteria and hoping the rest of us don’t notice.  
• Consequently we have all witnessed the growing reality of whole classes of people within the church who feel they no longer have a place in the church because they are divorced, gay, or cannot accept a position of the church on contraception or the role of women, etc.  

In the face of this reality which has come to dominate the inner experience and outward posture of our Church, Francis said: “The Church must be a home of all, not a small chapel that can hold only a small group of people.”  Words that proclaim that the church and especially its shepherds must be humble in bringing God’s mercy to the modern world—to liberate people from the arrogance, authoritarianism, and hubris of both the church and state that has made people lose a sense of their worth and God’s healing mercy and love.  

To accept the challenge that Francis puts before us it is necessary that we listen to the Jesus whose teachings he reflects.  The Jesus who always rebuked the mentality in which in the name of religion:

• People close themselves off from any real dialog or encounter in the search for truth. 
• Who for the sake of certitude and self-assurance imprison themselves in very narrow definitions of the human person and human relationships. 
• Who out of fear use morality and religion to justify unfair or even violent opposition to those who do not share their world view or live as they do.  

Indeed we need very much the liberating encounter with the Jesus who was always in opposition to the religious ideologies and fundamentalisms of his own day.  

For he was always exposing the idolatry of their presumption to put God in a bottle and exposing the difference between believing in air-tight theological definitions and believing in the living God who is beyond all our definitions.  

We need the transforming encounter with this Jesus:

• Who in the face of the self-righteousness of the representatives of religion rebuked their pretense to have any special hold on God’s love and mercy.
• Who in the face of bigotry and the religiously endorsed nationalism and prejudices of his day - proclaimed the worthiness of the foreigner, the pagan, and social outcast. 
• Who in reaction to those who tried to use the scriptures as a weapon against him— taught that the scriptures are alive to us only if we allow them to speak unfettered by our prejudices and predetermined ideas of what they must prove or have to say to us.  

This is the Jesus who stands before us today in the gospel—as the one who proclaims the ever greatness of God in the face of all human attempts to contain God.  He stands as the one who proclaims the utter falsehood of all human beliefs that do not lead us to a deeper and humbler understanding of God’s compassionate love for all people.  

It is this Jesus who calls us to act out our faith in the concrete circumstances of our lives where God is constantly acting  in unexpected ways to reveal the interconnecting  web of relationships which we never knew existed between saints and sinners, believers and unbelievers, men and woman, rich and poor.  

We cannot encounter this Jesus without being challenged to see our Church and world through his eyes.  We are challenged to judge ourselves and our church by the standard of the one who taught that the ultimate test of our faith is whether we are being led to a more humble submission to God and a more compassionate embracing of one another.

To accept his challenge is not easy, but unless we allow the words of Jesus to fill our hearts we will not be free of the fear that only pretends to capture the truth, and thus be able to encounter that truth which alone can make us free.  

Thus, I hear in the words of Francis the words of the one whose vicar he was called to be—and I for one believe he is making the same challenge that Jesus is making in today’s Gospel.  As confusing as it may be for many, we must learn to see things differently - through the eyes of Jesus, or as Francis said:  We must find a new balance or else even the moral edifice of the Church will collapse like a house of cards.  

As Jesus always said, let those who have eyes see, let those who have ears hear.   

A challenging lesson in life is the fact that opening ourselves up to love and to others is also opening us up to the possibility of suffering. Jesus knew this when he gave himself for us, and tries to teach us this through his word and Gospel. The acceptance of this lesson, and how we grapple with it, is the focus of this homily.
 

Homily by Fr. William Au for April 19, 2020 | For the Gospel of John 20: 19-31

The Gospels after Easter relate the stories of Jesus appearing to the disciples to reveal to them the truth of His resurrection and call them to be His witnesses. The disciples to whom He appears are crushed because their expectations of how things were to happen were turned upside down. Jesus teaches them that what they lost was only their expectations of how things were supposed to go. They did not lose Him and they must trust that He will be with them in how life was unfolding for them. Joseph Campbell said, "We must let go of the life we planned on, in order to embrace the life that is waiting for us." This is what Jesus called the disciples, and is calling us to do.

View the full Liturgy of the Word for April 19, 2020: theshrine.org/virtualparish/online-worship/april-19-2020
 

Fr. Bud Stevens of St. Mary's Seminary presents a reflection of what it means to be the People of God in challenging times.  How must we be the People of God today? 

Fr. Bud Stevens
Rev. Gladstone "Bud" Stevens, P.S.S.  received his Ph.D. in Systematic Theology from Marquette University.  He was ordained for the Archdiocese of Louisville in 2000 and has been with the Society of St. Sulpice since 2002. 
For six years he taught Systematic Theology and Philosophy and served as Vice Rector and France Merrick University Chair at Mary’s Seminary & University in Baltimore Maryland.  Fr. Stevens was appointed Academic Dean of St. Patrick’s Seminary & University in 2008. During the 2013-2014 school year Fr. Stevens was assigned as Vice Rector and Dean of Men. He served as President/Rector and Associate Professor of Dogmatic Theology at St. Patrick’s Seminary until 2017. 
Fr. Stevens is now Associate Professor of Systematic Theology and Dean of the School of Theology at St. Mary’s Seminary & University in Baltimore.

No dear thing will be forgotten; everything human will connect; for I can make all things well.

It was once said, that the most difficult thing we do as human beings is say good-bye.  Life is a journey that constantly demands letting go and moving on – letting go of things and people and situations that can no longer be – and move on into what is new.  The ability to say good-bye is essential as our growth as human beings.  If we don’t move on, we condemn ourselves to a sadness that...
Listen to this full homily by Fr. Au: 

What blocks us from being able to see how God is working in our lives? How can we be more open to really seeing his work and its value? This homily grapples with these questions, how our expectations can end up serving as obstacles that keep us from feeling this openness, and the power of a shift in perspective.
 

Valentine’s Day always brings up discussions of love: what it really is and how it operates within our lives. This homily describes the different types of love we experience, how they connect back to the love we find with God, and the ways we can show our appreciation for this love and spread it to others.