Homily Given at St. Margaret's Retreat Center
On the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord
to the 9th Grade Confirmation students from St. Christine's in Marshfield
By: Rev. Ronnie P. Floyd, STL
Friends in Christ, There is a lie that we have been told since our youth a lie about what human life is about and about what will truly make us happy.
When you turn on the TV or look at the internet we are bombarded by images of excitement and glamor. Whether its Jack Bauer saving the world ever 24 hours and doing more in an hour than most people do in a life time or the fabulous cribs of famous celebrities or the made for TV drama of reality TV, if we are not careful, just because of the sheer volume of these images, we might get the idea that what we see in the media is normal and that our lives are boring in comparison.
So often in my parish I hear teens in my youth group complain about how boring Wareham is, maybe you feel the same, but the fact of the matter is that if you are bored with your life it's because you are looking for happiness in all the wrong places.
Before entering seminary I lived in Washington, DC and worked for the US government,
and having spent five years after that living in the Vatican while doing my studies, I have had the chance to do all sorts of neat things, and to meet and get to know many interesting people, who live the lives that TV teaches us to envy.
I've met Admirals and Generals, spies and millionaires, Princesses, Senators, Cardinals, and Popes, I've met fighter pilots and soldiers, gypsies, and monks,
comedians, actors, and even a deposed Emperor or two.
I've been airlifted from the US Capitol in Marine Helicopter, fired machine guns and grenade launchers, eaten dinner with Ambassadors, worked with the Secret Service and the Swiss Guard, and even met Dick Cheney when he wasn't in an undisclosed location.
God blessed me with so many opportunities in my life, but none of it brought me happiness. I think its because, whether it's the first time you drive a car or the first time you ride in a limo or a helicopter or the first time you meet a president, rock star, or Pope your first time is always the most exciting. The feeling of Euphoria, of a type of happiness, that comes from doing something you have only dreamed about for the first time, often can deceive you into thinking that the next time will be as good as the first, but it's not so! The excitement of a rare first,
quickly becomes common place the second and third and fourth time you do something.
I remember when I first met the Pope I could barely bring myself to speak to him, I was so excited, and while I never became a close confident with the Holy Father
living in Rome, attending so many Papal events, and seeing the Pope so often I lost that nervous joy that I had the first time I met John Paul or the first time I served Mass for Pope Benedict.
I wouldn't know from personal experience, but I am told that it's the same between married people. That first time, especially when you have saved yourself for your spouse--is awesome--a true gift that you can only give to one person, but soon the martial act becomes less exciting, more common place, and yet when done with love also more rewarding, or so I'm told.
The world lies to us when it tells us that sex, or wealth, fame or power will make us happy. They can't because they all become old, tired, boring, almost as soon as we experience them.
Our God reveals the truth about what makes us happy in the life of Jesus Christ--
Jesus teaches that the stuff of life, the things and situations we experience that some people think will make us happy are really only a pretext, a stage, on which we have the opportunity to love.
As the Catechism teaches: we are made to know God, so that we can love Him, and because we love Him, serve Him. This Love of God is discovered, and learnt, and practiced, and perfected in and through the created world, most especially by our love for our fellow man.
True happiness comes from true love, because true love is never boring but always new. AND I am not talking about smoochie smoochie love but the type of love that makes two people want to be friends for life. When you love a person, human or divine
you are always interested in them, always discovering new things about them, always seeking new ways to help and care for them, because of this every situation of life whether it's your wedding night or the day you watch your beloved dies of old age
becomes an adventure and an opportunity to mine the depths of the mystery of love.
Jesus shows us that we can be happy even hanging on the cross because even there we can love, this is why St. Paul points to the Jesus on the Cross when trying to explain what true love is to married Christians. Love makes the boring everyday life that we all live an opportunity to love deeper, harder, and more faithfully.
The events of life are of secondary importance to the people because while every experience no matter how exciting eventually becomes common place, becomes boring, it's the people we love and who love us that gives even a boring experience joy.
Most especially, Jesus tells us, it's our God's loving presence in all the moments of our life that gives life meaning.
In His Baptism in the Jordan, Jesus shows us that God is willing to go down even into the waters of sin, into the darkest parts of the human experience and even enter into the death and suffering that sin causes. And by doing so he shows us what it means to truly love and He frees us from Sin, giving us the possibility to love selflessly.
In Baptism, Jesus shares in the repercussions of sin so that we can share in His love, His sonship, and His Spirit, which is the spirit of Love.
When Jesus was baptized the Heavens opened and a voice from heaven proclaimed: This is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased. God says this also about each of us because of our Baptism. We are His beloved sons and daughters and it is this love that makes life worth living. Our job, our vocation, is to respond to this love
each in our own unique way. But, Love is not easy and so our loving Father gives us the Spirit of His Son the Holy Spirit to strengthen us so that the Love of God which comes to dwell in our hearts in Baptism can blossom in our lives.
My friends I tell you from personal experience that no experience or material thing can make you happy. Your happiness doesn't even depend directly on a person. Happiness comes from within, when we accept the gift of God's life in us when we accept the gift of Love and live in the Spirit of God who is Love.
I hope you believe me now, but even if you don't, remember what I am telling you, because eventually we all realize that without true Love the world is boring. Sooner or later we all realize that nothing in the world can bring us true happiness, and it's in that moment that we are faced with a choice take the risk of loving God or despair.
The world is good, and there is nothing that exists that is totally evil, but only by living in total goodness, in the presence of our God who is Love, can we see and appreciate the goodness of the world.
Through the Sacraments given to the Church by Christ God is constantly entering into our lives, cleansing us from our sins and giving us the power to love. This is the power that He wants to give you in confirmation the power to be a heroic lover--the power to bear witness to love--the power to be a Saint.
God loves you--no matter what you do--no matter how you look--no matter what you own, or who you are, or what you can do for Him. God really does love you, just the way you are.
The world lies to us trying to convince us that we need something or someone else to be Happy. God wants you to know today, that happiness is simply accepting His Love and responding to it by choosing to live in the Spirit--by choosing to Love.
AS we go to God's altar today we pray that all those who are preparing to receive the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Love don't listen to the lies the world tells us about happiness but find true happiness by living their life in the spirit, the spirit of Love.
What Recompense can I give to the Lord?
Ordination to the Diaconate
Monday, January 11, 2010
The Baptismal Priesthood and the the Vocation Shortage
Homily Given at St. Patrick's in Wareham
On the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord
The 1st Sunday in Ordinary Time
By: Fr. Ron Floyd
My friends there is a vocation crisis going on in the Church today I am sure you all know about it. We need more priests in the Church to spread the gospel, and lead the people, and sanctify the world.
Ask a dozen faithful Catholics what the solution to the problem is and you will get a dozen answers ranging from prayer, to advertisements, to ordaining married men.
But the true answer to the problem is that we all have to realize that the shortage of ordained priests stems from a shortage of baptismal priests, Or at least, from a shortage of Christians living up to the vocation that we all receive from Christ in Baptism.
I remember a funny little story I once heard:
After the Baptism of his baby brother in church,
little Johnny sobbed all the way home in the back seat of the car.
His father asked him three times what was wrong.
Finally, the boy replied, "That priest said
he wanted us brought up in a Christian home,
but I want to stay with you guys."
In the Gospel today Jesus went down into the waters of Baptism to share in totally in the human condition. In my version of the Gospel it says nothing about Jesus getting into the clergy baptism line. Rather he went down into the waters with all of us with the multitudes of men women and children there to take on our guilt and the repercussions of our sins but also to give us a share in His life and destiny.
In the waters of Baptism Jesus ordain to share in our sufferings so that we could share in His mission on Earth and His glory in Heaven.
As baptized Christians we are called a prophetic, royal and priestly people because to us is given the commission and command to spread the good news, by governing our lives, our families, and our world according to God's Law and by sanctifying the world by the sacrifices this requires.
Friends we are all priests in Jesus Christ, all of us called to offer sacrifice, to live sacrificially, which simply means to live lives of selfless LOVE. As an ordained priest my vocation is to help you by preaching God's word and offering up the Sacrifice of the Altar which is the same sacrifice of Calvary the Cross of Jesus Christ by which Jesus washes us of our sins and leaves us a model for how to love, and how to live in love.
But your vocation is just as awesome, and just as necessary!
All baptized Christians--having received the gift of faith, and heard the word of God, having been washed clean of our sins in the waters of Baptism and through the Blood and Water that pour forth from the heart of Jesus as He hung on the cross, and having seen the example and model of perfect charity in Jesus' sacrifice for us on the Cross--
All baptized Christians are invited to go and do the same.
The Crisis in the priesthood began, and will end, if and only if Christians begin to live their baptismal priesthood. The day that Catholic Christians begin to see the difficulties of life whether marriage, or family, or children, or work, or illness, or poverty not as something to be loathed and avoided but as an opportunity to Love God and offer our lives as a sacrifice to Him, is the day that our children will again begin to consider in large numbers, the possibility of sacrificing the human happiness of a family, for the spiritual happiness of religious life or the priesthood.
As a culture we have become selfish, that's not to say we make no sacrifices for each other, but how often when we do make a sacrifice for our children or a neighbor
do we do it half-heartily, how often do we complain about it, how often do we fail to risk everything and give all we are and have not just to a stranger, but to our wives and children and families?
One used to hear people talk about offering up their sacrifices to the Lord, today it seems we simply try to run from difficulty and pain! Thats not to say that God wants our suffering, but that He wants and we need to loving hearts in the face of suffering. He wants us to be thankful for our life even when we don't understand why we are suffering!
Jesus our High priest shows us that priesthood is about self-giving which, of course, is simply another name for thanksgiving, love and sacrifice.
And true priest ends at the cross with the total gift of what we hold most dear
As Jesus' priesthood shows us, eventually any authentic priesthood demands that ultimate sacrifice--the total gift of self.
That's what we signed up for at baptism, that's the deal that will get us into heaven
and if it sounds scary it should, because we can't do it alone! With the help of the Holy Spirit, however, we are all capable of this sort of heroic love.
We are all called by our baptism to save souls, by living our life as a heroic self sacrifice. God doesn't ask anything extra-ordinary of most of us He simply asks that we do whatever we normally do extra-ordinarily.
Today as we contemplate the baptism of the Lord I will leave you with a last little story:
A priest and a bus driver both died and went to Heaven .
They get to the pearly gates where Pope St. Peter greets them.
Motioning to the priest, he points to 50 acres in heaven of rolling hills
with a little cottage on the knoll.
St. Peter turns to the priest and says "This will be yours for eternity.
A perfect little cottage, right next to lovely pond, a lush little garden,
and a library full of books."
The priest says, "Thank you so much. This I shall enjoy!"
Next, St. Peter motions to the bus driver.
Pointing to a castles on a mountain in the distance he says,
there are about 500 acres of land,
with mountains and lakes and rivers for you here.
St. Peter says "This will be yours for eternity.
You can live in that castle with servants to wait on you hand and foot,
and you can have everything you want."
The bus driver looks and St. Peter and says
"Well, now, don't think I'm not grateful,
but why am I getting so much more than the priest?"
St. Peter just laughs and says "You brought more souls to Heaven!
When the priest preached, everyone fell asleep.
When you drove your bus, people prayed!"
As the body of Christ we are all responsible for helping each other
get to heaven, will you take this responsibility seriously this year?
On the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord
The 1st Sunday in Ordinary Time
By: Fr. Ron Floyd
My friends there is a vocation crisis going on in the Church today I am sure you all know about it. We need more priests in the Church to spread the gospel, and lead the people, and sanctify the world.
Ask a dozen faithful Catholics what the solution to the problem is and you will get a dozen answers ranging from prayer, to advertisements, to ordaining married men.
But the true answer to the problem is that we all have to realize that the shortage of ordained priests stems from a shortage of baptismal priests, Or at least, from a shortage of Christians living up to the vocation that we all receive from Christ in Baptism.
I remember a funny little story I once heard:
After the Baptism of his baby brother in church,
little Johnny sobbed all the way home in the back seat of the car.
His father asked him three times what was wrong.
Finally, the boy replied, "That priest said
he wanted us brought up in a Christian home,
but I want to stay with you guys."
In the Gospel today Jesus went down into the waters of Baptism to share in totally in the human condition. In my version of the Gospel it says nothing about Jesus getting into the clergy baptism line. Rather he went down into the waters with all of us with the multitudes of men women and children there to take on our guilt and the repercussions of our sins but also to give us a share in His life and destiny.
In the waters of Baptism Jesus ordain to share in our sufferings so that we could share in His mission on Earth and His glory in Heaven.
As baptized Christians we are called a prophetic, royal and priestly people because to us is given the commission and command to spread the good news, by governing our lives, our families, and our world according to God's Law and by sanctifying the world by the sacrifices this requires.
Friends we are all priests in Jesus Christ, all of us called to offer sacrifice, to live sacrificially, which simply means to live lives of selfless LOVE. As an ordained priest my vocation is to help you by preaching God's word and offering up the Sacrifice of the Altar which is the same sacrifice of Calvary the Cross of Jesus Christ by which Jesus washes us of our sins and leaves us a model for how to love, and how to live in love.
But your vocation is just as awesome, and just as necessary!
All baptized Christians--having received the gift of faith, and heard the word of God, having been washed clean of our sins in the waters of Baptism and through the Blood and Water that pour forth from the heart of Jesus as He hung on the cross, and having seen the example and model of perfect charity in Jesus' sacrifice for us on the Cross--
All baptized Christians are invited to go and do the same.
The Crisis in the priesthood began, and will end, if and only if Christians begin to live their baptismal priesthood. The day that Catholic Christians begin to see the difficulties of life whether marriage, or family, or children, or work, or illness, or poverty not as something to be loathed and avoided but as an opportunity to Love God and offer our lives as a sacrifice to Him, is the day that our children will again begin to consider in large numbers, the possibility of sacrificing the human happiness of a family, for the spiritual happiness of religious life or the priesthood.
As a culture we have become selfish, that's not to say we make no sacrifices for each other, but how often when we do make a sacrifice for our children or a neighbor
do we do it half-heartily, how often do we complain about it, how often do we fail to risk everything and give all we are and have not just to a stranger, but to our wives and children and families?
One used to hear people talk about offering up their sacrifices to the Lord, today it seems we simply try to run from difficulty and pain! Thats not to say that God wants our suffering, but that He wants and we need to loving hearts in the face of suffering. He wants us to be thankful for our life even when we don't understand why we are suffering!
Jesus our High priest shows us that priesthood is about self-giving which, of course, is simply another name for thanksgiving, love and sacrifice.
And true priest ends at the cross with the total gift of what we hold most dear
As Jesus' priesthood shows us, eventually any authentic priesthood demands that ultimate sacrifice--the total gift of self.
That's what we signed up for at baptism, that's the deal that will get us into heaven
and if it sounds scary it should, because we can't do it alone! With the help of the Holy Spirit, however, we are all capable of this sort of heroic love.
We are all called by our baptism to save souls, by living our life as a heroic self sacrifice. God doesn't ask anything extra-ordinary of most of us He simply asks that we do whatever we normally do extra-ordinarily.
Today as we contemplate the baptism of the Lord I will leave you with a last little story:
A priest and a bus driver both died and went to Heaven .
They get to the pearly gates where Pope St. Peter greets them.
Motioning to the priest, he points to 50 acres in heaven of rolling hills
with a little cottage on the knoll.
St. Peter turns to the priest and says "This will be yours for eternity.
A perfect little cottage, right next to lovely pond, a lush little garden,
and a library full of books."
The priest says, "Thank you so much. This I shall enjoy!"
Next, St. Peter motions to the bus driver.
Pointing to a castles on a mountain in the distance he says,
there are about 500 acres of land,
with mountains and lakes and rivers for you here.
St. Peter says "This will be yours for eternity.
You can live in that castle with servants to wait on you hand and foot,
and you can have everything you want."
The bus driver looks and St. Peter and says
"Well, now, don't think I'm not grateful,
but why am I getting so much more than the priest?"
St. Peter just laughs and says "You brought more souls to Heaven!
When the priest preached, everyone fell asleep.
When you drove your bus, people prayed!"
As the body of Christ we are all responsible for helping each other
get to heaven, will you take this responsibility seriously this year?
Sunday, December 27, 2009
A Normal family = A Holy Family
Homily for the Feast of the Holy Family
Given at St. Patrick's Church
By: Fr. Ronnie P. Floyd, STL
A father once told his son that he would buy him a new car if he cut his hair, got all A's on his report card, read the Bible, and got up and went to Mass on Sunday's
Some months later the son returned to his father with all A's on his a report card
And he told his father that he had read the bible all the way through and hadn't missed a Mass in months.
"What about the hair cut?" asked the father.
The son replied, that "Jesus and the Apostles wore their hair long."
The father replied, "Then you also know that they walked everywhere."
Now matter how holy the family, when you live together 24/7 there is going to be conflict, because conflict is not a sin but simply an opportunity to love more profoundly. We see that today in the gospel story of the finding in the temple.
It's interesting, today the Church celebrates the Holy Family of Nazareth, which has always been held up as the model of Christian family life and yet when you think about it, while I REALLY wouldn't call the Holy Family dysfunctional I think we could all agree it wasn't exactly what you call normal. I mean you have Joseph, a good man who accepts the role of Jesus' human father and yet biologically, he is not His father. Then there is Mary, Joseph's wife, who is an out of wedlock mother and what's more, as Christians we believe, she is a perpetual virgin, Finally there is little baby Jesus, who feeds, and coos, and smiles, but still probably needed a nappy changed every now and then, who we Christians insist is the Son. not of Joseph, but of God Himself, consubstantial, or of the same stuff of God" all-powerful, all-knowing, God from God, Light from Light, as we profess in the creed. When you think about it the Holy Family is pretty weird and you have got to ask, in what way are they the model of Christian family life?
It's important to remember that God is good and His wisdom is beyond human wisdom, and when you accept the revealed truth of our faith and ask God for the patients and wisdom to see what God is doing we usually will find that the hard parts of our faith, that some want to simply dismiss, are in reality the most profound realities. We see this in the case of the Holy Family.
In the life of the Holy family we see through simplistic definitions of the family and see what is at the core of authentic family life and THIS is why Popes and Saints and Doctors of the Church have held up the Holy Family of Nazareth as an example to us.
Let's start with Joseph, what do we learn from this Holy Man?
Well first of all, we are reminded that God is Father, and He created men in his image and likeness, and so all men are created to be fathers. Fatherhood, for rational, spiritual, human beings, is more than animal paternity--more than biology! All men can be fathers, even a celibate priests like myself , men who choose to forsake the good of married life for the sake of the Kingdom of God--as Jesus tells us in Matthew, because fatherhood is about providing for your family, and protecting it from the evils of the world, it's about being holy, and educating your child as God intends, it's about trusting God and His Divine Plan and helping your sons and daughters to do the same. Fatherhood is a spiritual reality that is about mercy and justice, and love--all things that biology can't provide for!
Then there is the ever virgin Mary who is the model of Motherhood. What can we learn from her?
Mary reminds us that woman, like man, is made in God's image and likeness and while the Fatherly dimension of God often overshadows the maternal Scriptures are clear that God, who is not biological, and thus has no gender is also maternal to us, his children. However, Mary also demonstrates another dimension of the Christian family, its relationship with God: the spousal dynamic. Mary is a virgin who conceived a child, and while she was the human spouse of Joseph she is also known as the spouse of the Holy Spirit, because we believe that it was through the Holy Spirit that Jesus was conceived in her womb.
Mary is par excellence the spouse of God and she shows us that all authentic marital love, authentic family love, must start and be based on this relationship, on this love, not with our human husband or wife, but on our love of God. Both husband and wife can only come to the fullness of love with each other through our relationship with our God who teaches us what it means to be faithful, teaches us mercy and forgiveness, shows how to trust and to hope, and ultimately reveals to us what true love is on the cross. We all know people who get married in Vegas, or on the beach, or even here in the Church, and are divorced within the year, the month, or even the week! Human love is not enough to keep a marriage alive because human love is always partial. Human love, alway holds back from giving everything, and so often ends by refusing everything. Human marriage, like biological animal mating, has been occuring in this way since the fall of Man in the Garden, because human marriage is fundamentally about our animal drive to procreate, about creating biological life.
In contrast, Christian Marriage, and the Christian family, is fundamentally about spiritual life, life which takes a lifetime to develop and be born. Christian Marriage takes the human good of marriage, and sees it in the light of Mary's spiritual union with God, a spousal relationship and covenant that in Baptism we all share in! In the Christian family, all the members of the family , the Church, are scene in their true light--as Children of God. And so all members of the family have the duty in love: to help each other, their neighbors, and even their enemies to be what God created them to be. To help them follow God's plan, to be Holy, to be Saints!
Finally, in Jesus we see a reality about our Children that maybe many parents would prefer to forget! Jesus is the Son of God, the Word made Flesh, Wisdom incarnate, and God's holy Spirit is his own. Sure there were probably many human experiential things that Joseph and Mary had to teach Jesus but intellectually Jesus shared the mind of God and was the teacher not the student as we see in the story of the finding in the temple.
In Baptism this reality manefests itself in our children just as it did in the Christ Child. Parent's often forget that their children in baptism become conduits of wisdom and grace, like the child Jesus sitting today in the midst of the teachers, asking questions and teaching them. While it is not true that your child is the incarnate son of God the same spirit that Jesus possessed is given to your children in Baptism, that is why it is so important to realize that the family is the school of truth, beauty, wisdom, faith, hope, and Love and that while we do all have distinct roles in the family, ultimately the teacher is not mom or dad or gramps but God himself who teaches all members of the family through each other and through our neighbors.
So this Christmas, as we celebrate the Holy family, I encourage youto take seriously the reality of the family. Don't worry about being a "normal family" rather concentrate on being a holy family, with God at the center of your everyday life. Focus on protecting, providing for, and teaching each other, in humility, like Joseph did! Focus on your spousal relationship with God, as did Mary, so that your divine spouse can teach and help you through life's most difficult times. Try to be the Christ child, Emmanuel, God with us, for one another, all the time remaining open to the ways the Spirit of God is working in and teaching you through the lives of your spouse and children and parents.
Being a Holy family is not easy, but it is good, does lead to happiness, and ultimate draws us into the family life of the Church which is a precursor of the family life of Heaven. Lets pray that one day we will be able to say St. Dad and St. Mom, St. Son, St. Daughter, or even St. Aunt or Uncle. Because this is the destiny of the Christian family that we see in the example of Ss. Mary and Joseph.
Given at St. Patrick's Church
By: Fr. Ronnie P. Floyd, STL
A father once told his son that he would buy him a new car if he cut his hair, got all A's on his report card, read the Bible, and got up and went to Mass on Sunday's
Some months later the son returned to his father with all A's on his a report card
And he told his father that he had read the bible all the way through and hadn't missed a Mass in months.
"What about the hair cut?" asked the father.
The son replied, that "Jesus and the Apostles wore their hair long."
The father replied, "Then you also know that they walked everywhere."
Now matter how holy the family, when you live together 24/7 there is going to be conflict, because conflict is not a sin but simply an opportunity to love more profoundly. We see that today in the gospel story of the finding in the temple.
It's interesting, today the Church celebrates the Holy Family of Nazareth, which has always been held up as the model of Christian family life and yet when you think about it, while I REALLY wouldn't call the Holy Family dysfunctional I think we could all agree it wasn't exactly what you call normal. I mean you have Joseph, a good man who accepts the role of Jesus' human father and yet biologically, he is not His father. Then there is Mary, Joseph's wife, who is an out of wedlock mother and what's more, as Christians we believe, she is a perpetual virgin, Finally there is little baby Jesus, who feeds, and coos, and smiles, but still probably needed a nappy changed every now and then, who we Christians insist is the Son. not of Joseph, but of God Himself, consubstantial, or of the same stuff of God" all-powerful, all-knowing, God from God, Light from Light, as we profess in the creed. When you think about it the Holy Family is pretty weird and you have got to ask, in what way are they the model of Christian family life?
It's important to remember that God is good and His wisdom is beyond human wisdom, and when you accept the revealed truth of our faith and ask God for the patients and wisdom to see what God is doing we usually will find that the hard parts of our faith, that some want to simply dismiss, are in reality the most profound realities. We see this in the case of the Holy Family.
In the life of the Holy family we see through simplistic definitions of the family and see what is at the core of authentic family life and THIS is why Popes and Saints and Doctors of the Church have held up the Holy Family of Nazareth as an example to us.
Let's start with Joseph, what do we learn from this Holy Man?
Well first of all, we are reminded that God is Father, and He created men in his image and likeness, and so all men are created to be fathers. Fatherhood, for rational, spiritual, human beings, is more than animal paternity--more than biology! All men can be fathers, even a celibate priests like myself , men who choose to forsake the good of married life for the sake of the Kingdom of God--as Jesus tells us in Matthew, because fatherhood is about providing for your family, and protecting it from the evils of the world, it's about being holy, and educating your child as God intends, it's about trusting God and His Divine Plan and helping your sons and daughters to do the same. Fatherhood is a spiritual reality that is about mercy and justice, and love--all things that biology can't provide for!
Then there is the ever virgin Mary who is the model of Motherhood. What can we learn from her?
Mary reminds us that woman, like man, is made in God's image and likeness and while the Fatherly dimension of God often overshadows the maternal Scriptures are clear that God, who is not biological, and thus has no gender is also maternal to us, his children. However, Mary also demonstrates another dimension of the Christian family, its relationship with God: the spousal dynamic. Mary is a virgin who conceived a child, and while she was the human spouse of Joseph she is also known as the spouse of the Holy Spirit, because we believe that it was through the Holy Spirit that Jesus was conceived in her womb.
Mary is par excellence the spouse of God and she shows us that all authentic marital love, authentic family love, must start and be based on this relationship, on this love, not with our human husband or wife, but on our love of God. Both husband and wife can only come to the fullness of love with each other through our relationship with our God who teaches us what it means to be faithful, teaches us mercy and forgiveness, shows how to trust and to hope, and ultimately reveals to us what true love is on the cross. We all know people who get married in Vegas, or on the beach, or even here in the Church, and are divorced within the year, the month, or even the week! Human love is not enough to keep a marriage alive because human love is always partial. Human love, alway holds back from giving everything, and so often ends by refusing everything. Human marriage, like biological animal mating, has been occuring in this way since the fall of Man in the Garden, because human marriage is fundamentally about our animal drive to procreate, about creating biological life.
In contrast, Christian Marriage, and the Christian family, is fundamentally about spiritual life, life which takes a lifetime to develop and be born. Christian Marriage takes the human good of marriage, and sees it in the light of Mary's spiritual union with God, a spousal relationship and covenant that in Baptism we all share in! In the Christian family, all the members of the family , the Church, are scene in their true light--as Children of God. And so all members of the family have the duty in love: to help each other, their neighbors, and even their enemies to be what God created them to be. To help them follow God's plan, to be Holy, to be Saints!
Finally, in Jesus we see a reality about our Children that maybe many parents would prefer to forget! Jesus is the Son of God, the Word made Flesh, Wisdom incarnate, and God's holy Spirit is his own. Sure there were probably many human experiential things that Joseph and Mary had to teach Jesus but intellectually Jesus shared the mind of God and was the teacher not the student as we see in the story of the finding in the temple.
In Baptism this reality manefests itself in our children just as it did in the Christ Child. Parent's often forget that their children in baptism become conduits of wisdom and grace, like the child Jesus sitting today in the midst of the teachers, asking questions and teaching them. While it is not true that your child is the incarnate son of God the same spirit that Jesus possessed is given to your children in Baptism, that is why it is so important to realize that the family is the school of truth, beauty, wisdom, faith, hope, and Love and that while we do all have distinct roles in the family, ultimately the teacher is not mom or dad or gramps but God himself who teaches all members of the family through each other and through our neighbors.
So this Christmas, as we celebrate the Holy family, I encourage youto take seriously the reality of the family. Don't worry about being a "normal family" rather concentrate on being a holy family, with God at the center of your everyday life. Focus on protecting, providing for, and teaching each other, in humility, like Joseph did! Focus on your spousal relationship with God, as did Mary, so that your divine spouse can teach and help you through life's most difficult times. Try to be the Christ child, Emmanuel, God with us, for one another, all the time remaining open to the ways the Spirit of God is working in and teaching you through the lives of your spouse and children and parents.
Being a Holy family is not easy, but it is good, does lead to happiness, and ultimate draws us into the family life of the Church which is a precursor of the family life of Heaven. Lets pray that one day we will be able to say St. Dad and St. Mom, St. Son, St. Daughter, or even St. Aunt or Uncle. Because this is the destiny of the Christian family that we see in the example of Ss. Mary and Joseph.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Jerusalem Gaudi Gaudio Magno
Homily for the Third Sunday in Advent
Gaudete Sunday
Given at St. Patrick's Church
By: Rev. Fr. Ronnie P. Floyd
Shout for joy, O daughter Zion!
Sing joyfully, O Israel!
Rejoice in the Lord always.
Today the Church Celebrates Gaudete Sunday, the Sunday of Rejoicing because Advent is more than half over and we are closer to the celebration of the culmination of Human History on Christmas Day.
Today's readings are full of joyful exaltation but what is the cause of this great joy!
St. Peter in his first letter instructs the Church to always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. It is this hope that Peter talks about that gives rise to joy and the reason for our hope, for our joy, for this period of anxious preparation ts the birth of Jesus Christ.
At the center of our faith before all other mysteries is the mystery of the reality we celebrate at Christmas, that God became Man. As Catholic's we believe a lot of things that the world calls crazy:
We believe that a poor Virgin gave birth, to a king,
We believe in a king and savior who was born in a stable, was murdered by his own people, and died but lives today
We believe that the words of a priest can forgive sins, and change bread and wine into blood and flesh.
We believe in an allpowerful God who allows His week creatures to blapheme His name and destroy His masterpiece of creation
And yet really if you think about it, all these things don't seem so crazy when we realize the awesome contradiction of Christmas "THE WORD became FLESH" we read in John's Prologue. That's like saying that the constitution of the United States
became a person, except the Constitution only governs a small portion of human culture. The Word is God's master plan for creation and we believe that all that is stuffed into a limited human body. What's more, the Word doesn't just pretend to be flesh, Jesus isn't the big bad Word in sheeps clothing. The Word truly becomes Flesh. The unknowable, uncontainable, all-powerful, all-knowing, Lord God of Hosts, who created all things by uttering His Word limits himself and humbles himself so that he can be with us, so that he can dwell in our midst, and speak to us not out of a cloud of fire or through messenger spirits but face to face - mano a mano.
The incarnation is like the president of the United States, deciding that rather than give a press conference he was going to visit the home of every citizen of the United States just so that he could tells us he really does feel our pain. Only the president never created a tree or animal, a human, a planet, or a universe out of nothing. The cause for our joy is this reality, which is almost unimaginable! I sometimes think that it's the fantastic nature of Christian Gospel that shows it must be true. Think about all the other attempts man makes to search for God all the other religions of the World. They are all about submission to the will of God: man follows God's will, or else we get struck by lightening. No other religion preaches a God who cares about us more than a dog trainer cares about his dogs obeying. In contrast Christianity proclaims a God who seeks us out, desire to be close to us, because he loves us. A God's who's laws are given "that we may have life and have it more abundantly." A God who humbles himself to become one of us and then dies to show the depths of His love for us.
Emmanuel, as the Church approaches the end of Advent, we begin to pray for the Light of Christ, the Light of God with us, Emmanuel, because this is the reason for Christian hope! This is what every heart longs for!!! although we often don't know our own heart well enough to realize it! This is the reality that we celebrate at Christmas, and that during advent we prepare our hearts for, because the reality is that God did come to be with His people when the baby Jesus was born 2 millenia ago, but He is still waiting for His people to let this reality sink in and change the way they look at the world.
Christ is the Prince of Peace the source of our joy and when we realize that He is all our hearts want and need there is no reason to be greedy, or steal, or kill, or lust. When we realize that we are made to enjoy God, gazing at the Light, Truth, and Love that is the face of God, the Face of Jesus Christ--the whole world changes for us. And we are at peace, because we have attained our hearts deepest longing- Emanuel
Gaudete Sunday
Given at St. Patrick's Church
By: Rev. Fr. Ronnie P. Floyd
Shout for joy, O daughter Zion!
Sing joyfully, O Israel!
Rejoice in the Lord always.
Today the Church Celebrates Gaudete Sunday, the Sunday of Rejoicing because Advent is more than half over and we are closer to the celebration of the culmination of Human History on Christmas Day.
Today's readings are full of joyful exaltation but what is the cause of this great joy!
St. Peter in his first letter instructs the Church to always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. It is this hope that Peter talks about that gives rise to joy and the reason for our hope, for our joy, for this period of anxious preparation ts the birth of Jesus Christ.
At the center of our faith before all other mysteries is the mystery of the reality we celebrate at Christmas, that God became Man. As Catholic's we believe a lot of things that the world calls crazy:
We believe that a poor Virgin gave birth, to a king,
We believe in a king and savior who was born in a stable, was murdered by his own people, and died but lives today
We believe that the words of a priest can forgive sins, and change bread and wine into blood and flesh.
We believe in an allpowerful God who allows His week creatures to blapheme His name and destroy His masterpiece of creation
And yet really if you think about it, all these things don't seem so crazy when we realize the awesome contradiction of Christmas "THE WORD became FLESH" we read in John's Prologue. That's like saying that the constitution of the United States
became a person, except the Constitution only governs a small portion of human culture. The Word is God's master plan for creation and we believe that all that is stuffed into a limited human body. What's more, the Word doesn't just pretend to be flesh, Jesus isn't the big bad Word in sheeps clothing. The Word truly becomes Flesh. The unknowable, uncontainable, all-powerful, all-knowing, Lord God of Hosts, who created all things by uttering His Word limits himself and humbles himself so that he can be with us, so that he can dwell in our midst, and speak to us not out of a cloud of fire or through messenger spirits but face to face - mano a mano.
The incarnation is like the president of the United States, deciding that rather than give a press conference he was going to visit the home of every citizen of the United States just so that he could tells us he really does feel our pain. Only the president never created a tree or animal, a human, a planet, or a universe out of nothing. The cause for our joy is this reality, which is almost unimaginable! I sometimes think that it's the fantastic nature of Christian Gospel that shows it must be true. Think about all the other attempts man makes to search for God all the other religions of the World. They are all about submission to the will of God: man follows God's will, or else we get struck by lightening. No other religion preaches a God who cares about us more than a dog trainer cares about his dogs obeying. In contrast Christianity proclaims a God who seeks us out, desire to be close to us, because he loves us. A God's who's laws are given "that we may have life and have it more abundantly." A God who humbles himself to become one of us and then dies to show the depths of His love for us.
Emmanuel, as the Church approaches the end of Advent, we begin to pray for the Light of Christ, the Light of God with us, Emmanuel, because this is the reason for Christian hope! This is what every heart longs for!!! although we often don't know our own heart well enough to realize it! This is the reality that we celebrate at Christmas, and that during advent we prepare our hearts for, because the reality is that God did come to be with His people when the baby Jesus was born 2 millenia ago, but He is still waiting for His people to let this reality sink in and change the way they look at the world.
Christ is the Prince of Peace the source of our joy and when we realize that He is all our hearts want and need there is no reason to be greedy, or steal, or kill, or lust. When we realize that we are made to enjoy God, gazing at the Light, Truth, and Love that is the face of God, the Face of Jesus Christ--the whole world changes for us. And we are at peace, because we have attained our hearts deepest longing- Emanuel
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Tota Pulchra est Maria
Homily for the Solemn Feast of the Immaculate Conception
Given at St. Francis Xavier Church in Hyannis
By: Rev. Fr. Ronnie P. Floyd, STL
On Dec. the 8th, 1954 Pope Pius the IX define dogmatic truth that:
the most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instance of her conception,
by a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God,
in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the human race,
was preserved free from all stain of original sin
Today we celebrate as a solemn Feast that definition
which is the cause of our great hope during the advent season
Because Mary our Mother and the Mother of the Church
is not just a Saint in Heaven who intercedes for us,
but she is the model of the Church.
Mary is a preview of coming attractions
Because Mary is what we will be one day,
if we persevere in holiness.
Baptism purifies us from the guilt of original sin
making it possible for us to love God,
but we still struggle with the effects of sin.
For Mary all the stain of original sin is removed
and whats more she is given
the add grace of life with the Holy Spirit
In Mary's singular privilege we see
what God has planned for all of us
if we trust in Him and persevere to the end.
However to understand and apprieciate this gift
we must understand what we mean by original sin and its effects.
Original sin is that first sin of the human race
to choose knowledge of good and evil
over the sure path of following trusting God.
By doing so we chose to make ourselves the judge
of what is good and bad, right and wrong,
and we see the repercussions of that today.
Because of original we lost control of bodies
and became subject to them
Concupiscence—or the tendency to make bad choice
apart from God's plan and law took control of our will
so that even when we tried to do the right thing,
evil motives crept in.
A large part of this is our passions and emotions
which became unduly powerful in our decision making process
Our bodies literally took on a mind of their own,
not doing what we want them to do
and doing what we wished they wouldn't
Physically Death and Sickness entered the world
But worse than this spiritual death became a reality.
Our eyes became cloudy and we became blind to the Truth
about creation, ourselves, our nature, God, God's law,
And this spiritual blindness made it even more difficult
to choose well.
Original sin is a mess.
And it creates a mess in our lives and relationships
it creates so many knots of tension and anxiety
that make it so hard to be happy.
The gift of the Immaculate Conception
is freedom from all the knots that sin creates in life.
Freedom from the physical, spiritual, and mental
limitations that sin causes
so that we can be at peace in all situations
come what may
because we know that God is walking with us
in the garden of this world
just as he walked with Eve and Adam in paradise.
Today as we look toward Mary with hope,
praying for that day when our Baptism is completed
and we become completely free to love and be loved by God
Free to be completely happy
We remember Mary under the title of the Immaculate Conception
but also under the title of Mary the untirer of knots.....
Given at St. Francis Xavier Church in Hyannis
By: Rev. Fr. Ronnie P. Floyd, STL
On Dec. the 8th, 1954 Pope Pius the IX define dogmatic truth that:
the most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instance of her conception,
by a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God,
in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the human race,
was preserved free from all stain of original sin
Today we celebrate as a solemn Feast that definition
which is the cause of our great hope during the advent season
Because Mary our Mother and the Mother of the Church
is not just a Saint in Heaven who intercedes for us,
but she is the model of the Church.
Mary is a preview of coming attractions
Because Mary is what we will be one day,
if we persevere in holiness.
Baptism purifies us from the guilt of original sin
making it possible for us to love God,
but we still struggle with the effects of sin.
For Mary all the stain of original sin is removed
and whats more she is given
the add grace of life with the Holy Spirit
In Mary's singular privilege we see
what God has planned for all of us
if we trust in Him and persevere to the end.
However to understand and apprieciate this gift
we must understand what we mean by original sin and its effects.
Original sin is that first sin of the human race
to choose knowledge of good and evil
over the sure path of following trusting God.
By doing so we chose to make ourselves the judge
of what is good and bad, right and wrong,
and we see the repercussions of that today.
Because of original we lost control of bodies
and became subject to them
Concupiscence—or the tendency to make bad choice
apart from God's plan and law took control of our will
so that even when we tried to do the right thing,
evil motives crept in.
A large part of this is our passions and emotions
which became unduly powerful in our decision making process
Our bodies literally took on a mind of their own,
not doing what we want them to do
and doing what we wished they wouldn't
Physically Death and Sickness entered the world
But worse than this spiritual death became a reality.
Our eyes became cloudy and we became blind to the Truth
about creation, ourselves, our nature, God, God's law,
And this spiritual blindness made it even more difficult
to choose well.
Original sin is a mess.
And it creates a mess in our lives and relationships
it creates so many knots of tension and anxiety
that make it so hard to be happy.
The gift of the Immaculate Conception
is freedom from all the knots that sin creates in life.
Freedom from the physical, spiritual, and mental
limitations that sin causes
so that we can be at peace in all situations
come what may
because we know that God is walking with us
in the garden of this world
just as he walked with Eve and Adam in paradise.
Today as we look toward Mary with hope,
praying for that day when our Baptism is completed
and we become completely free to love and be loved by God
Free to be completely happy
We remember Mary under the title of the Immaculate Conception
but also under the title of Mary the untirer of knots.....
Monday, December 7, 2009
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