Becoming the Best Version of Ourselves by Living the Beatitudes

Sermon on the Mount: Matthew 5

The word of God today, takes us to the ninth century before Jesus, to a holy man named Elisha. A wealthy childless woman welcomes this “holy person” into her home. This woman invites us to always be hospitable to one another; and Elisha challenges us to trust in God’s providence or care for us as we journey through life.

St. Paul’s letter describes how we have the triune life of God in us through the waters of baptism. Paul challenges us to remember who we really are: new creatures, sons and daughters of God our Father, called to live a God-like life.

In the Gospel according to Matthew, Jesus calls us to get our priorities straight.  Our first priority: to live in a relationship with God. Our second priority: to see the face of God in our fellow human beings, no matter how hidden or shabby that face of God is in them.

Jesus calls us to live a life of discipleship. Not tomorrow or some future day, but today, here and now! Then we will experience what joy and happiness are all about.
Everyone wants happiness.

Many think that if they get enough money, fame, or power, they’ll be happy. But if so, explain how so many celebrities who “had it all” sedated themselves with drugs or other addictions.

Happiness has to factor into life: work with its stresses; relationships with their tensions; disappointments versus dreams; guilt about what one did or didn’t do; health or lack thereof. And ultimately, happiness has to factor into death.

Let’s remember that at one point in his earthly ministry, many followers left Jesus. Jesus then turned to his inner circle and asked, “Do you also want to leave?” Peter replied, “Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”

Yes, we become happiest by mastering the basics: I suggest we easily find them in the Beatitudes. Then with God's grace, we become the best version of ourselves.

In the opening verses of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus describes the kind of moral character we should have, in our relationship with God and our relationships with one another.

First, disciples recognize that only God can fill their emptiness.  That’s what it means to be poor in spirit. We needn’t try to fill ourselves with earthly things. Disciples recognize who they are: fragile creatures whom an awesome Creator gifted with life. We realize our good fortune to be alive and are grateful and we owe this awesome Creator praise and worship
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Disciples yearn for healing from their brokenness and know only God can heal. They are gentle, considerate and unassuming. Disciples, above all, hunger for a right relationship with God.

The next beatitudes have to do with our relationships with one another.

Fortunate are they who forgive wrongs done to them and let go of their anger and resentment. God will be merciful to them. Fortunate are the pure in heart, who have integrity, openness, and authenticity in their relationships; they will see God face to face. Fortunate are they who are ready to suffer rather than betray their conscience, who try to do the right thing in all situations.
And finally, fortunate are they who don’t stir up conflict but try to be at peace with God, with themselves, and with others.

I pray that God will grace us to live the beatitudes so that we will become the best version of ourselves, disciples of the Master, always living in a right relationship with God and each other. Amen!

Jesus: Our Source of Eternal Life

Jesus and the Samaritan Woman at the Well

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Each Sunday in Lent reflects on life as in a prism. First Sunday, a hungry Jesus tells the tempter what nourishes life: not bread alone but every word from God. Last Sunday, Transfiguration, the disciples saw the unique and awesome presence of God in Jesus.  They saw the future of Jesus and theirs. And that's ours as well. This Sunday, Jesus is life-giving water for the woman at the well.

Sunday's word of God carries us back to the exodus: the deliverance or freedom of the Hebrews from their oppressors in ancient Egypt. They are wandering and complaining! Our favorite past-time. Where is God, they wonder. Moses cries out to God, and God demonstrates his presence among them. Water suddenly flows from a rock and quenches their thirst.

The life-giving waters allude to our baptism and the promises made to God. Now Baptism is a rite of initiation into a global Catholic faith community of disciples of Jesus. Water can be death-threatening (think, e.g., of a hurricane) or life-giving (imagine, e.g., you're in a desert).  Baptism symbolizes a dying to a self-centered life and a rising to an other-centered, God-centered life. The author may be asking whether we live a God-centered life.

Paul in his letter to the Christian Community at Rome speaks about the saving work of Jesus Christ. Through him we have friendship with God whose love and life is poured out upon and into us in baptism so that we can reflect the presence and glory of God in our lives.

In the Gospel according to John, Jesus asks for water from a woman of questionable character and from a despised people (the Samaritans), only to engage her in a conversation about thirst. Jesus reveals who he is. He is a prophet, the messiah, the source who gifts us with eternal life, living water who can satisfy our quest for meaning in life. In faith, this woman discovers new purpose in life through her encounter with Jesus, and she heralds the good news to her townsfolk.

We all thirst like Jesus and the woman at the well, don't we? But what are we thirsty for? Some simply thirst for a decent livelihood. Others for health, wealth, pleasure, power and fame. Still others, like the Samaritan woman, seem to thirst for purpose.

Today Jesus urges us to live our everyday lives to the fullest. This Lenten season is a time for deciding what we believe to be truly important and meaningful, and then acting upon it today.

We can participate in God’s triune life not only here and now but hereafter by living a life of regular prayer, by fasting from attitudes and behaviors that jeopardize our relationship with God and one another, and by living a life of generous service.

Baptism of the Lord

Baptism of Jesus by John

Sunday we celebrated the baptism of Jesus by John in the Jordan River. We began our liturgy with the rite of the sprinkling of water upon ourselves, a symbolic invitation to renew our own baptismal promises and be ever more enthusiastic missionary disciples of Jesus.

Our baptism began our journey to the eternal dwelling place of God, with Jesus as our guide and teacher. We not only experienced water, as Jesus did, but we became disciples of Jesus. That experience changed our lives. We became new creatures, alive with God's life.

The word of God takes us back in our imaginations to the sixth century before Jesus, to the Hebrew exile in Babylonia (what we know as Iraq). This passage is a poem, a song, about a future “servant” who will be a light to those who live in darkness.

The early Christian community saw in this “servant” Jesus: who proclaimed a transcendent purpose for us: eternal life with God beyond our earthly life. This word may challenge us to ask whether we have our priorities straight: always to be in a right relationship with God and one another.

In the Gospel according to Matthew, John the Baptist invites people to live a God-centered, other-centered life. His focus was clearly to point to Jesus as the Messiah. John then baptizes Jesus. As Jesus arises from the waters, the power of God overwhelms him and fired up by the spirit of God, he begins his public ministry in Galilee.

Baptism is a rite of initiation into a world-wide community of Christian disciples. We baptize children to emphasize that baptism is a gift from God, like human life, not just something we choose to have.

To understand baptism, we recognize who we are in relationship to God. In the beginning, man and woman walked with God; they had friendship with God and with one another. But somehow they lost that friendship. They fell from grace. Genesis describes very powerfully their fall. They hid from God. Ever since, human beings have cried out for God’s friendship again.

That's why God became flesh – one with us -- in Jesus. God, through the dying/rising of Jesus Christ by the power of the Spirit, re-establishes that friendship again.

This new relationship makes very straight-forward demands upon us. The so-called Ten Commandments are about freeing ourselves from attitudes and behaviors that undermine our relationship with God and one another. Put simply, God is an awesome creator God who loves us unconditionally; and our response always is gratitude.

As we celebrate Jesus’s baptism, I invite all of us to renew our baptismal promises now, to be missionary disciples of Jesus, gloriously alive especially in word and sacrament.

Experiencing God

James Tissot's "He sent them two by two."

The sixth century before Jesus was a catastrophic time for ancient Israel. Yet the author of Isaiah speaks about a bright future. Jerusalem will prosper again. A miracle! Centuries later in Jerusalem, Jesus brought new purpose in life—another miracle! Yes, our citizenship is in heaven. The author of Isaiah may be asking whether our lifestyle and behavior reflect our citizenship.

Paul, in his letter to the Galatians, proclaims that the death of Jesus on the cross and his resurrection from the tomb is our salvation, eternal life. Paul celebrates that God through the life-giving waters of baptism has transformed us into “new creatures,” living temples of God, alive with the breath or life of God in us.

Paul writes that the power of God enabled him to endure all kinds of hardships for the sake of the Gospel. That same power of God enables us to practice a life of virtue.

In the Gospel according to Luke, Jesus sends forth disciples to continue his saving and healing work. They are to trust always in God's unconditional them for them. They reported back how they witnessed to the power of God with healings of the sick.

Now what does it mean to witness? I’m a witness not simply by seeing or saying something is true but if I actually experience it.

The disciples were witnesses to Jesus in that sense. They walked, talked, ate and prayed with him.
Peter, for example, reached out for Jesus’s hand in the Sea of Galilee. Doubting Thomas put his finger into Jesus’s side in the Jerusalem upper room.

We too are called to be witnesses. We testify to our core Christian beliefs: the triune God, the incarnation, the death/resurrection of Jesus, the dependable Spirit, the global community of disciples, life eternal. But what men and women look for, expect from us, is some visible sign that we have experienced what we believe.

We will evangelize effectively if we are a sort of sacrament, a symbol, an outward sign of God’s grace/presence in us. We must not simply know about God; we must experience God.

The heroes and heroines of Christianity knew/experienced God in their lives: Augustine, Francis and Clare of Assisi, Teresa of Avila, Therese of Lisieux, Mother Teresa, and many more.

Faith from God empowers us to have a right relationship with the triune God as creator, redeemer, and sanctifier. Faith is richer and deeper than belief. Faith calls us to enter into a relationship with Jesus Christ, to follow Jesus who illuminates the darkness around us as we journey toward our heavenly home. Faith is about our relationship with God that we nurture, especially in the Eucharist.

Belief, on the other hand, is a statement about the essential truths of our faith that we proclaim e.g., in the fourth-century Nicene Creed.

From faith comes a confidence and purpose in life. We trust in a God who is always near to us. Successes convince us that it is possible to succeed. Our failures show us it is possible to survive and proceed.

We are in the hands of an all-good God. And with a can-do, faith-filled spirit, we can overcome the  challenges we face in life.  Why? Because God loves us unconditionally, because God is always near to us and because God ultimately will achieve His purpose for us and for this universe.  And to this divine providence, and to Jesus Christ, gloriously alive, our way, our truth and our life, we joyfully witness in our daily lives.

Jesus Christ Lives and We Live

Rubens' Resurrection of Jesus

Happy Easter! Felices Pascuas! Joyeuses Paques! Buona Pasqua! Frohe Ostern!

We call Easter the Paschal mystery: paschal relates to the “paschal lamb” of Passover, which Jewish communities celebrate during our Easter celebration this year.

Easter is about the daybreak, starting over. Jesus’s resurrection is a new day. This is a time to be joyful, happy, enthusiastic about life. We have so much to be grateful for, especially the gift of faith in Jesus Christ who is our way, our truth and our life.

Every morning, we awaken to begin again. Perhaps the night before, we carried burdens: things undone, bad things said, good things unsaid. In the morning all is possibility, opportunity. Who among us is content with things as they are? Who does not want to be more loving, more generous, more tenderhearted, more thoughtful, more helpful? This Easter, God wakes us up again, to rediscover the extraordinary graces transforming our lives TODAY.

In the Gospel according to John, chapter 20, we hear the story of the resurrection of Jesus. Mary Magdalene finds the tomb empty. Shortly thereafter, Christ appeared to Mary Magdalene outside the tomb, to the disciples in the upper room, and on the road to Emmaus. Jesus is not among the dead. Jesus is risen. He is alive. He has passed through this earthly life – as we do --- and then through the mystery of death into a new, transfigured reality. This heavenly reality is ours as well. That is the Easter message!

Jesus said, I live, and because I live, we also live.

How? We are born in the flesh and reborn in the Spirit. Water is poured upon us in the rite of baptism, and in these waters the Spirit of God is poured upon us, and the triune God lives within us, and we live within the triune God.

As we grow into adolescence, the bishop anoints our forehead with oil in the sign of the cross—and God pours out more fully the gifts of the Spirit so that we might practice more faithfully all of the fruits of the Spirit: patience, generosity, faithfulness and love.

And at the Eucharist, where the living Christ sacramentally presences himself to us in the signs of bread and wine, and becomes one with us in Communion,; the living Christ feeds us with his life so we can continue our journey. If we should stumble on our journey, the living Christ lifts us up in the rite of penance where we celebrate God’s mercy.

Yes, through the sacraments, we experience the living Christ and we go forth to love and serve one another. The exchange of wedding promises, the anointing of the sick, all the sacraments are indeed signs of God’s care.

Eternal life in relationship with God and one another—that is our ultimate purpose. Easter is about getting our priorities straight, about asking, “How can we become more godlike, more loving, more generous, more thoughtful, more helpful?”

Easter is indeed about a new day, a fresh start.  Why. Because Jesus Christ lives. And because He lives, we live.

Lent: Getting Our Priorities Straight

Rembrandt's Sketch of Jesus in Wilderness

We have begun our Lenten journey. It is a time to slow down and remember our purpose in life and get our priorities straight.

This weekend, many of us heard the Grand Prix cars racing through downtown St. Petersburg. In our high-speed world it’s a challenge to slow down, remember our purpose and get our priorities straight.

Last Wednesday we had our foreheads smudged with ashes and may have heard a prayer,  “Remember, you are dust and to dust you will return.” Dust symbolizes nothingness. It’s commonplace. Yet God became dust in Jesus of Nazareth. And Jesus charged dust with the grandeur of God through his death/resurrection.

Lent tells us that it is time to get our priorities straight. It's a time for prayer; a time for doing without unnecessary things so the needy can have what’s necessary;and a time to reach out with a helping hand.

The word of God carries us back to the early history of ancient Israel. Deuteronomy focuses on identity, reminding the Hebrews of their roots: they were once at-risk nomads; exploited as cheap labor in Egypt; brought to a place of abundance; and now grateful to the God who saved them.

And our Christian identity? In baptism, we were branded and transformed into a “new creatures,” sons and daughters of God our Father, called to live a god-like life. That’s our identity.

Paul, in his letter, proclaimed fundamental truths: Jesus is our Lord to whom we owe our allegiance. Through faith, we have eternal life.

In the Gospel according to Luke, the devil appears as a seductive voice in the wilderness, tempting Jesus with earthly power and prestige. In some form, these are temptations that many human beings face. God’s word may be asking us how true we are to our identity as baptized Christians.

Yes, Lent is time to consider again our priorities. Leo Tolstoy can be a good resource. Many of us know of Anna Karenina and War and Peace. But Tolstoy also wrote shorter, profoundly religious novels. A Confession, for example, expresses his search for meaning and purpose.

Perhaps Tolstoy’s masterpiece was the 75-page novel The Death of Ivan Ilyich. A man on his deathbed realizes he wasted his life. In exchange for luxury and status, he sacrificed his authenticity and integrity. The result is a spiritual barrenness. Now he faces a mortality he never acknowledged, and he's terrified.

Avoiding thoughts about death, in favor of superficialities, is not reserved to nineteenth-century Russians. It's the story of everyone.

20th American writer Frederick Buechner gives us an examination:

 If you had only one last message to leave to the handful of people who are most important to you, what would it be in twenty-five words or less? Of all the things you have done in your life, which is the one you would most like to undo? Which is the one that makes you happiest to remember? If this were the last day of your life, what would you do with it?

It can be depressing business, Buechner notes, “but if sackcloth and ashes are at the start of it, something like Easter may be at the end.”

As we enter the Lenten season, let us ask God for the grace to pursue single-mindedly the priority in life: eternal life in relationship with God and one another.

Christ As Our Model

Jesus Calling His Disciples

In the Gospel according to Luke, Jesus went into the deep waters of the Sea of Galilee with Peter and the other fishermen. Peter, while skeptical about fishing again after catching nothing all night, recognized something special in Jesus. So, at Jesus’s bidding, Peter cast the nets again and made a sensational catch. Peter experienced the awesome presence of God in Jesus. He cried out, “Lord.” Jesus calmed the fishermen, saying “Do not be afraid,” and called them into discipleship.
They left everything they had and followed Jesus.

Jesus, the master, accomplished much because he loved much: with an intense love of God and a compassionate love of fellow human beings, with a message of hope about the future.

Jesus has called us to discipleship through the life-giving waters of baptism. Baptism is God’s gift to you and me. And our basic response to God’s gift is gratitude.

Baptism defines us, transforms us at the very core of our being. Baptism, in other words, plunges us into the mystery of Jesus Christ. Paul captured this magnificently when he wrote to the Christian community in Galatia: “Christ lives in me.”

Yes, God has made us “new creatures.” The living Christ is our exemplar or blueprint. In fact, the universe reflects the presence of God in myriad forms. And baptized and confirmed in the Spirit, we celebrate the mystery of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ at the table of the Lord. This celebration sends us out among others to live a Godlike life, to treat all God’s creatures with respect—for humans are made in the image of God.

What precisely does “sent out to others” mean?

Each one of us has gifts or talents. Football’s Tom Brady, or celebrities like Denzel Washington or Lady Gaga, are not the only people with talents. You and I have special gifts and talents, by virtue of baptism. Within our common Christian life, there are many splendid callings.

I love the image of “a thousand points of light.” God can shine through us with transcendent brilliance. And those who ask for the grace to draw closer to God glow with that radiance. They become a point of light. You have a specific vocation/calling to fire up people with God’s grace so that they will choose their better selves, share with others, and stand for what is right by being an example.

Let us rejoice as the Virgin Mary rejoiced, for God has done great things for us. Yes, always look for the good in ourselves, in others, and in the situations in life.

In the end, the purpose of our baptismal calling is to matter, to make a difference for the better by giving the best we have in service to one another! And then we will realize with God’s grace our authentic selves.

Living a God-centered, Other-centered Life

Pope Francis Baptizing a Child in the Sistine Chapel

Baptism is a transformative experience. God lives in us and we live in God. That’s our indelible identity. God empowers us, by his grace and favor, to live godlike lives, as sons and daughters of God our Father and co-heirs to the promise of eternal life.

And in this celebratory event, we are invited to renew our baptismal promises so that we can live ever more transparently, trying as best we can to do the right thing.

The beginning of the new year is a perfect time to do this. We may have already reflected on all that happened in 2018, for example: What am I thankful for? Or perhaps, we might sigh with relief, good riddance.  In any case, what do I look forward to in 2019? What will I do differently? Let's look to the word of God as a guide.

The word of God takes us back to the sixth century before Jesus, to the Hebrew exile in ancient Babylonia (known today as Iraq). The passage is a poem, a song, about a “servant” who will be a light, a doer of justice, a liberator, a faithful keeper of God’s covenant. The early Christians saw in this Hebrew “servant” Jesus, who proclaimed a transcendent purpose for us: eternal life with God by living a god-like life here and now.

In the Book of Acts of the Apostles, the author describes Peter, fired up by the grace of God, proclaiming Jesus as God’s anointed One, the Messiah. And you and I should be fired up by the grace of God, trying to live a life of virtue.

In the Gospel according to Luke, John baptizes Jesus in the waters of the Jordan River. And the power of God overwhelms Jesus and he begins his public ministry, proclaiming a new purpose for us.

John the Baptist’s calling was clearly to point to Jesus as the Messiah. And what is John doing? He is baptizing. He’s inviting people to turn their lives around, to live a God-centered, other-centered life. We might ask whether we reflect Jesus Christ in our relationships.

To understand baptism, we first have to understand who we are in relationship to God. The Book of Genesis captures this. In the beginning, man and woman walked with God; they had friendship with God and friendship with one another. But in spite of knowing what God wanted, they lost that friendship. They hid from God, each blaming others. Sometimes, we play the blame game, don’t we.
Ever since, the human family has cried out for God’s friendship again.

So God became flesh. God, through Jesus Christ and with the power of the Spirit, re-establishes our friendship.

Thus, baptism initiates us into a new community of fellowship, of grace. This makes very straight-forward demands and freedoms. Put very simply, our God is all-mighty and all-present, a God of love; and our response to God’s love is gratitude.

This planet of ours, and the people on it, reflect the image of God. And everything God has created – God’s people especially -- is worthy of reverence.

Merry Christmas

Rembrandt's Adoration of the Shepherds

Every year we relive the wonderful Christmas story. The Gospel according to John summed up this magnificent story in a single line: The Word became flesh.

That takes us back in our imaginations to the beginnings of the human family, in Genesis: when man and woman walked with God, had friendship with God and one another. But somehow man and woman lost that friendship, they fell from grace: they hid from God.

But in the midst of ancient Israel’s fidelities and infidelities to the covenant, God never reneged on his promises. And so the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.

The Word of God for the Christmas liturgies is like a prism through which is refracted the multiple facets of this great mystery of the Incarnation.

Isaiah proclaims glad tidings: the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. Paul writes that the grace of God appeared in Jesus Christ who made us “heirs” to the promise of eternal life. In the Gospels according to Matthew and Luke, the Virgin Mary gave birth to her son. She wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger.And the Gospel of John sums up the meaning of Christmas: the Word became flesh. That is God’s greatest gift to us.

Some gifts really transform the lives the people: gifts of teaching, of listening and supporting, of sharing time and experiences, of compassion and forgiveness and affirmation. This begins in our own families and workplaces and communities: enduring gifts that we can always give to one another.

The Word became flesh. That single line changed our destiny. Christmas means not simply God in Bethlehem centuries ago, but God within us. We carry within ourselves Emmanuel, God with us. How? By virtue of the life-giving waters of baptism.We gather to proclaim the awesome Word of God, to celebrate the presence of the living Christ.

That great truth of our faith, God within us, challenges us always to look for the good in ourselves, in other people and in all situations in life.

And who is the ultimate good-finder? God so loved us that he became one of us. Yes, Jesus had a unique relationship. He was God-man. A healer, a teacher, a peacemaker. Think of all the people in the Gospels that Jesus met: the blind, the leper, the lame, the sinner, the forgotten. And Jesus found goodness in all of them where many didn’t.

The promised Messiah has come, He is in our midst mystically in the word proclaimed and the sacrament celebrated, and He will come again in power and glory at the end-time. In the meantime, pray this Christmas season that the Lord will help those who doubt to find faith; those who despair to find hope; those who are weak to find courage; those who are sick to find health; those who are sad to find joy; and those who have died to find eternal life in God.