Vestment Homily

Homily for the Eleventh Sunday in ordinary time year C
Given at St. Patrick's in Wareham

By Rev. Ronnie P. Floyd, STL

Every year priests are forced to come head to head with that unfortunately difficult passage from Matthew’s Gospel woe to the pharasees and scibes because…“all their works they do for to be seen of men. For they make their phylacteries broad, and enlarge their fringes. ”

Strangely enough, I am not challenged with this difficult Gospel today and yet I have chosen to preach about it.

Today Fr. John and Fr. Bill, and I have decide to give a little lesson on vestments at all the Masses and so I decided to start with this difficult passage because…

I have often thought it strange that after proclaiming this Gospel very seldom does the priest, who stands before the people in more or less ornate robes, with tassles and phylactaries, ever try to make apology for his manner of dress.

I think that embarrassment about this passage and a misunderstanding of the theology of sacred vestments are part of the reason why the quality of sacred vestments have suffered so much in the last fifty years.

Anyone who has been to Mass with me on a solemnity or feast, knows that I am either, for some reason, not ashamed by this passage, or, otherwise, hopelessly dense.

The fact of the matter is that vestments are not a new thing, a recent aberration of the fairly recent 15^th or 14^th or 13^th century. In truth, Catholic priests in all 22 Catholic rites in the world

have for most of the life of the Church, definitely for more than 17 centuries, worn special garbs to celebrate the sacred mysteries. But if this is true, how do we understand what Jesus is saying when He says: “Woe to you…”?

When Jesus criticizes the dress of the Pharisees, he is critiquing not their fashion sense, but their love for honor and places of honor, and the fact that the loveliness of their hearts do not correspond to the loveliness of their clothing.

I will be the first to admit that my vestments are often much more beautiful than my soul often sullied as it is by pride, and laziness, and envy, and every other sin. As I tell all those who come to me for confession: even the greatest saint knows that he sins seven times a day.

However, the beauty of sacred vestments, are not meant to be a reflection on my dignity, wisdom, or authority, but meant to be a reflection of the dignity, wisdom, authority, and beauty of the one by whose authority every priests acts.

In that same chapter of Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus says: do not be called rabbi or master or father. And yet we still call priests by the title father, not because of who they are, because of their own dignity but because a priest is an image of Christ, who works in and through his priests and who is the image of the Father.

Vestments are meant to remind, the priest, just as much as the people, of the great dignity of Jesus Christ, who is our one true high priest to remind us of the beauty of His act of pure love on the Cross, which by the power of the Word of God and the Holy Spirit priests make present on the Altar.

A priest before Mass starts dressed in His simple clerical garb, these simple black garments are a symbol of learning just like the graduates cap and gown which developed from the monks garbs of the early middle agesat the first monastic schools and universities

They are a symbol also of the death to the things of the world that an honest search for the Truth, that is for our God, requires.

Around his neck, a simple white cloth, serves as a symbol of his teaching role. It recalls the white cloth which was worn in Roman times by Senators to keep their necks warm so that they might speak for long periods of time.

However, these “street clothes,” symbols of learning and honor are meant to be completely covered by the Sacred Vestments that remind the priest that despite his learning, and his teaching role, what a priest does at the Mass is not a work of his own hands but accomplished by the pierce hands, and feet, and heart of Jesus.

Starting with the Amice, a simple white cloth that covers the neck the priest prays that the Lord may cloth him with the helmet of salvation.

Along with the amice he puts on the long white alb a symbol of the purity not of the priest’s soul but of every Christian’s soul when washed clean by Christ in the waters of baptism. By putting on this white garment the priest puts on the human dignity of Christ and is reminded of the death that Christ’s perfect love endured, a death to self that the priest makes present on the Altar when he offers the Body and Blood of the Lord to the Father, and which the priest is challenged to make present in His life.

Next he wraps a simple cord around his waist, to symbolize the perfect chasity of Chirst but also the chains and difficulties that true love forces us to embrace in this life.

Over these under garments, a priest wears a long thin scarf called a stole, which is a symbol of the yoke of Christ, a symbol of the of the authority of Jesus, but also the weight and burden of that authority, that we see in the cross.

Finally over all else come the chasuble, which means little house. This garment is a symbol of our one shelter and refuge, the love of God, by which all authority and power that comes from God is used for the good of mankind.

The vestments that the priest wears should be of the finest quality that we can afford, if we really believe that what happens at the Mass is a cosmic event that draws us into an eternal relationship with our God.

These beautiful garments, however, that we put on at Mass are only a reminder of how much more beautiful our souls are meant to be, that each of us are called to put on Christ, especially here at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

The outward symbols of the beauty of Christ’s work of salvation must make us want to make our souls inwardly more beautiful, more pure, and more holy.

Just like the woman in the gospel today we are all debtors to our Lord, Master, and God, we all owe God everything, and more still because of our sins.

It’s only by asking for and accepting God’s mercy and then working each and every day to put on the robes of justice, honor, mercy, and truth, that we can put on Christ and be counted among the sons and daughters of Christ.

Lets make St. Paul’s prayer our own today: I have been crucified with Christ; yet I live, no longer I, but Christ lives in me; insofar as I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who has loved me and given himself up for me.

Its all fun and games until someone goes to hell!

SMR end of the year school Mass

Given at St. Margaret's School

By: Rev. Ronnie P. Floyd, STL

A friend of mine has a funny little saying that he tells his friends whenever they are being led into temptation or considering doing something morally sketchy: Its all fun and games until someone goes to Hell!

In the old days Christians used to put a lot more emphasis on the reality of hell.

That hell exists and is the punishment for those who reject God’s goodness, love, and mercy is a firm fact of our faith. Jesus tells us on many occasions, and suggests in the Gospel today that there is something other than the Kingdom of Heaven, that people do end up there, and that it is not a nice place.

I think there are two reasons why people don’t talk about hell that often:

The first is a bad reason—simply put some people don’t believe in Hell. They can’t believe that a loving God would eternally damn His children to a fiery place of tornment—not realizing that the reality of Hell is an intergral proof of God’s goodness. God doesn’t force us to love Him, He loves us enough to let us choose even not to love God, i.e. Hell. The problem with this is you can’t be a Christian and not believe in Hell; and just because you don’t know or think a place exists doesn’t mean you can’t go there.

I think the second reason why people talk less about hell is a better one! The second reason is what Jesus talks about today, in Scriptures Jesus tells us the God sees the heart of Man and that, he judges us not on what we accomplish but on our intentions. God wants us to love Him, and Trust Him, and follow His law, His plan, because we love and trust Him not because we are afraid of the fires of Hell

Some people, myself included think, it’s better to focus on heaven and getting there! It’s like walking a tight rope or climbing a mountain, what do people always say when you are up high?

DON’T LOOK DOWN! Maybe just knowing it’s there is enough without concentrating on it.

So what do we have to do to get to heaven? Well it’s not easy, but it’s also not tremendously hard, either!

In the Gospel today Jesus tells us: I tell you unless your righteousness exceeds that of the Pharisees and scribes you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.

What was wrong with the Pharisees and Scribes?? They were good people. You might ask, well what’s wrong with being a good person? Nothing, except we can’t settle for the mediocrity of just not doing anything bad, God doesn’t want us JUST to avoid bad things, He wants us to choose to do good things, to love, not just the people who are easy to love but also strangers and even our enemies AND God wants us to choose to do good things not because mom or dad or Mr. Hudson or Fr. Ron or anyone else tells us to or will praise us for doing these things. God wants us to try to do good and avoid evil because we love God.

Everything comes from God is a gift from God, given to Man, isn’t this enough to make us love our God?

Heaven is an eternity with God and so to get to heaven we need to want to be there we need to love God.

Who wants to got to heaven? What do you think Heaven will be like?

To tell you the truth, I am not sure what heaven will be like, St. Paul tells us eye has not seen nor has the ear heard, nor has it even entered the mind of man, what God has prepared for those who love Him, and so while I have some thoughts about heaven I know that it will be so much more awesome than anything I can imagine!

And because I know and love God and I trust Him I am willing to believe on blind faith that whatever He has prepared for humanity in Heaven is worth waiting for! Worth working for, living for and even dying for!

So if we trust and love God and want to get into heaven what do we need to do to get in? We need to try to be perfect. Did you all hear that, I didn’t say we need TO BE perfect but that we need to TRY. God judges your heart, he knows if you love Him and are trying to know and serve Him. Even if you fail a 1000 times, the difference between the sinner and the saint is that the saint picks himself up, goes to God in confession, and tries to do better again. The saint does not settle for being a “good person,” in fact the saint doesn’t care at all whether people say they are good, bad, or crazy, The saint wants only to give everything to God in love.

I’ve gotten to know many of you this past year, and I know that so many of you, especially you eight graders have really great hearts, don’t settle for being good people don’t buy into the lie that the way to be happy is by being successful, or wealthy, or having lots of friends or a beautiful wife, by being ordinary.

Be extraordinary, live extraordinary lives filled with the joy and peace that can only come from loving the Lord God. God created each of us for heaven, but also to fulfill a special mission on earth!

Our mission on earth is our path to heaven. Listen to God’s plan for you and don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid of anything, for Jesus is with you leading you, if only you will turn to Him, and trust in Him.

Glory to the Father and Son and Holy Spirit--JS Bach

The Feast of the Holy Trinity

A Homily on the Blessed Trinity
Given at St. Patrick's in Wareham
By Rev. Ronnie P. Floyd, STL


There is something perfect about a three day weekend….

Somehow the fact that Saturday is three days from Tuesday, when we have to go back to work, and Sunday is not the end but the middle of the weekend, and the fact that we are relaxing on Monday rather than working makes a three days so much more restful than two. Even Monday, the end of a long weekend, seems more peaceful… because it’s a little gift, we are truly thankful for it, and so we enjoy it all the more. Three day weekends give us permission to enjoy the weekend to be truly renewed and rested, in a way that sadly we fail to enjoy and rest most weekends.

Today as we celebrate this memorial weekend, the Church appropriately recalls the perfection of three as it celebrates the Feast of the Most Blessed Trinity. You know (SIGN OF THE CROSS) that name which as Catholics we begin and end all things.

Like three days, for some reason, makes a weekend perfect the mystery of the Trinity is the revelation of the perfection of God.

We believe in one God, and yet God reveals, as we heard today in the Gospel, that one and three are not mutually exclusive.

Our God is one God, one being, Eternal, all powerful, and all knowing. There is no division in God, because you can’t have part of perfection and still be perfect, and yet because of, (not inspite of,) God’s perfection the one God is FATHER, SON, and HOLY SPIRIT.

All three persons God, all three the same, of the same nature, except the Father is not the Son, and the Son is not the Father nor is the Son or the Father the Spirit. There is no difference or division between what these three persons are, and yet one in being they are none-the-less three persons, three real relationships that define the three persons not by what, where, or how they are but by who they are in relationship to each other.

When we think about our faith, and especially the mystery of God, the mystery of the Trinity, it is so important to remember that God is not like us! He is completely different that all created things and so while He might reveal a glimps of who and what He is we can never fully understand it.

Even in Heaven when we see God face to face and we, in a sense, know God, we will only know God as boundless mystery. Each day in Heaven is an exploration into the depths of God’s love, which has no limit.

In our experience three persons are always three distinct beings. Humans were not meant to be more than one person! Most likely because it is hard enough for an imperfect being to be one person well, because personhood is about relationship and relationship is about love, and it is hard for us to love, sinful as we are!

Even when God became man, He became man as only one person of the Trinity, the Son, because while God by nature is perfect love, which must manifest itself always as relationship, as Trinity, man by nature is an imperfect lover that must work to love, even himself.

This difference between the perfect lover God and us makes it so hard to understand the Trinity and so it was only with great difficulty that the Church reflected on the many passages that refer to the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit and yet always, as the first commandment reminds us, one God.

And it’s not possible to just ignore the revelation of the Trinity, because it’s hard, as some suggest; we believe that ALL that God has revealed is necessary for our Salvation, and so out of a desire to be faithful to the revealed Word of God the Church struggled to come to grips with the reality of the Blessed Trinity. A reality, that we still don’t understand today 1600 years after

the Church put in into words in the 4^th century Creed of Nicea and Constantinople, which we profess each Sunday.

The question we must ask ourselves on this Trinity Sunday, and indeed, every time we involke the Trinity, is what does it matter?

Why did God reveal the mystery of the Trinity, a truth that has caused so much division in the world? Not surprisingly the answer to this question, as with all life’s important questions is found here at the Mass!

At the Mass our Sign of the Cross is explained and expanded so that all might understand what God is doing in creation.

From all eternity, we believe that the Trinity loved—the Father loved the Son, the son was beloved of the Father, and His reponse to the Fathers love, the love of the Father and the Son for each other, was the Spirit of God. This is and was perfect love and it is all that God needs for perfection and happiness, and still out of a surplus of love but out of no need or necessity, God created the world, and man in His image and likeness.

If you think about the Trinity as a pouring out of love, the Father who pours Himself, out on the Son, and the Son ho response by pouring Himself out to the Father, and the Spirit who pours out on both the Father and Son, the creation is an additional pouring out, which demands a response in love.

God pours out His love on the world and on us so that we can respond as the Son does, and so enter into His Trinitarian love. Perfect love proved too hard for man, and so we needed a savior to restore us to this destiny.

This is what Jesus does for us as He approaches the Altar. Jesus went up to the Altar of the Cross to show man how to be thankful to God. How to respond to God’s gift. God gives man everything, so what can and must we give God? Everything, just like the Father gives the Son everything and the Son responds by doing the same.

At the Altar Jesus shows us what true Trinitarian Love demands, and challenges us to bind up our sacrifice of praise, our entire life, with the offering of His body and blood, which through the power of the Spirit is offered up to the Father.

All creation comes from God, the Father, and at the Mass, in Christ, and through the Spirit all creation returns to the Father to give Him thanks and praise. The Trinity is so important not only because it tells us about God and His Love, but also because it shows us the way through Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit to be one with God, as the Father is one with the Son in the Spirit. Like His Son, God the Father loves us, if we are to enter into paradise, into His Trinitarian life we must love God with our whole heart, mind, and soul as Jesus taught us on the Cross, and this Love must bind us together with the Father, but also with each other in the Church through the Spirit.

The Trinity is not just who and what God is it’s who and what God wants us to be part of.

Lets make it our prayer today that we might be one, unified by our Love of God God and all mankind in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen,

Pentecost: Truth, the Church, and Salvation

A Homily for the Feast of Pentecost

Given at St. Patrick’s Church

By Rev. Ronnie P. Floyd, S.T.L

Why did God make us?

In the old days of the Baltimore Catechism, some of you might remember, Catholics were taught that God made us to know Him, love Him, and serve Him.

In the old days the Catholic Church focused a lot on short concise definitions, statements about our faith. The Nicene Creed, which we recite together each Sunday is one of the first of these statements. These statements of Faith are what we mean when we talk about doctrine and dogma. It’s important to remember where these definitions come from and what they lead us to, in order to realize how very important they are to the salvation of our soul.

Doctrine and Dogma, come from reality, from history, more precisely, from the history of God’s actions in the created world as recorded in Sacred Scriptures and Tradition. The most important and most difficult doctrines and dogmas come from the reality of the life of Jesus—recorded by the Church in the New Testament. When we talk about:

the Dogma of the Incarnation the belief that God became true man in the person of Jesus Christ without becoming less God

or

the Dogma of the Blessed Trinity, the belief that there is one God who is none-the-less three persons

or

the Immaculate Conception, the belief that Mary by a singular gift was preserved from the damage of original sin so that she could be a fitting mother of our Lord

we are expressing the realities that we read about in Sacred Scriptures, realities that although God doesn’t reveal explicitly, giving us a textbook or an in depth lecture on, He reveal in the richest way possible—through human experience. These experiences and the Spirit of God prompts people to record them, prompts the Church, the people of God, to recognize them as Revelation, as God’s dialogue with humanity, and prompts the Church to reflect on them until at last still guided by the spirit the Church formulates them into a definition, a doctrine.

The Church does this to protect the truth, the gift of truth we receive when the Word of God became man. Christ came as the Truth into the world to help the blind see, and the blindness that He came to heal was not the physical blindness that affects a few but the spiritual blindness that affects everyone here.

WE ARE ALL BLIND TO THE REALITY OF GOD BECAUSE OF SIN! BECAUSE OF OUR SINS AND THE SINS OF HUMANITY

Christ is the Truth about man and God that came into the world so that we might have life and have it more abundantly! The Truth of Jesus Christ is the only way for us to approach the Father, to enter Heaven and be welcomed there as a child of God. And so protect the integrity of the Truth is of supreme importance. That is why Christ says that it is better that I go, so that I might send the Spirit, Because the Spirit of God does three things in the world and in the Church that are essential to our eternal life and happiness.

First it is given to the Church to protect the deposit of Faith to protect the Church from ever loosing the key to heaven, the truth of Jesus Christ. As Catholics we believe that because Christ created the Church and gave the Church His Spirit, no matter how often we Christians fail, the Church cannot fail.

Second, the Spirit teaches us. As Jesus says “the Spirit will teach you all things and reminds us of what I [Christ] taught.” It’s not enough just to know God or to know Christ, in a superficial way. The Spirit helps us to truly love God. When we love someone we want to know more about them, The Spirit assists the Church to reflect on the FACTS of history that reveal God working in creation so that we can know more about him through his actions, just as we learned about our parents love for us each time they held us, fed us, comforted us in sorrow or sickness and rejoice in our successes.

Finally, loving God means wanting to know God, but also to serve God, and so the Spirit gives us the power of God, the power of Faith, Hope and Love, so that we might Love God by serving Him, primarilyby loving and serving His other Children. The Church is Holy not because of its members but primarily because it is filled with the Holy Spirit, and with so many holy men and women who filled with the Holy Spirit of God have taken the doctrines of the Church and put them into practice.

Our Faith is DEAD is it is only a notional thing, if its only an idea and a series of meaningless ceremonies. Friends REMEMBER the devil and all his fallen angels believe in God, they know the truth at least as well as the Church does, and yet they have chosen to ignore the truth. Hopefully at the end our lives none of us will be in that situation. Each of us received the Spirit in Baptism and the Spirit gives life to our souls, if only we will open our heart up to God.

If you are here, sitting in the back row of the Church ready to make a bolt for the door once you’ve received communion, or sitting in the front row, ready to wait until the end of closing hymn but still essentially take God for granted for the rest of the week until next week you come back to fulfill your obligation, I ask you to think about whether you really have the Love of God in my heart? It’s a question I ask myself every day. A question that we all need to consider.

Are we doing what we were created for, and what God promises will make us happy: knowing, loving, and serving God each day with the help of the Holy Spirit?

The Spirit makes it possible for us to encounter God today and to begin to know Him, and to serve Him. That’s what the gifts of the Spirit: Wisdom, Understanding, Counsel, Courage, Knowledge, Piety, and Wonder and Awe, are all about. These gifts that were given to the young people of the Parish this past Thursday at Confirmation aren’t just for them, but for all of us, that we might have Life. Lets make the prayer to the Holy Spirit our own today:

Come Holy Spirit, and fill the hearts of the faithful

And kindle in them the fire of your Love

Send forth your Spirit, O Lord,

And they shall be created, And you shall renew the face of the Earth

Veni Sancte Spiritu

Crew on the Ship of Peter

Homily for the Seventh Sunday of Easter

Given at St. Patrick's Church

By: Rev. Ronnie P. Floyd, STL

My friends in Christ. We are all in this together, in this Church, which has often been called the ship of Peter.

Jesus gave us the Church to help bring us through the waters of death—the waters of Baptism, and the storms of this life, to the shores of paradise. And He gave the Church Peter, the first pope, and the Apostles, and all the bishops, priests, and deacons, to keep us on course. Jesus gave us the Church to keep us working together. You see the ship of Peter, the Church, Isn’t a ferry or a powerboat, it’s an old fashioned sail ship powered by the Spirit of God, the wind that fills our sails, but also by the efforts of the members of the Church, who aren’t just passengers but also deck hands.

The Church works best, when like a sail boat, all hands work as one, working together to harness the wind, and maximize its effect. That’s why today Jesus prays for the Church That it might be one. This unity is so important to our common salvation because each of us like members of a team are responsible for helping each other reach our common goal. If you have ever seen a tall ship under sail or a racing boat mid-race you know how majestic this ultimate act of teamwork are. When the Church works like a well oiled machine, or better yet, like a living breathing organism it is so impressive to behold that it draws people to it.

That’s why I was saddened this week, on the Feast of the Ascension, to see how few of you, how few of my teammates in the game of life, took this responsibility seriously.

Just like not eating meat on Fridays of Lent and making some sacrifice on every Friday, coming together on these days is essential to the unity of our team. It’s not that there is any intrinsic wrong about eating meat on Friday’s of lent or not coming to a church on Sunday’s. In fact, you might know that Jews keep the Sabbath on Saturday. As a team as, a Church, we have decided that these are the best ways to honor and practice the sacrifice that Christ made and the commandment to keep holy the Sabbath, and it is sinful to dishonor that commitment.

Like Sundays, Holy days of obligation are days when the Church calls her members together to celebrate the mysteries of Christ’s life. Christ is the Way, and so like a football team,

We come together on these special days to study the game plan, and to play together practicing the plays. Most importantly, we come together to help each other, out of love, so that we might be one, as Jesus prays today. To choose not to come, on a Sunday or on a Holy Day, is to choose by your actions not to Love. You fail to love God by placing other priorities ahead of the team, the ship, that is your one sure path to eternal life with Him, and you choose not love your teammates, the members of the Church, who you simply can’t make time for.

To choose not to gather together at the Church is like choosing to skip practice it’s a serious sin against the team and against our coach, God. What’s more to choose not to come is to miss out on the joy of playing with your teammates, your brothers and sisters in Christ, the only game that you were made for.

Thankfully our coach is a merciful coach who instead of kicking us off the team, asks us simply to sit out a game, by not receiving communion with grave sin on our heart. God asks us to ask forgiveness of our team and our God for our mistake in confession, as He does whenever we make a serious mistake. Finally He asks us to do better in the future, because the unity of our team is not about power, it’s not about mean priests and bishops enforcing archaic rules on the laity. Our unity, a unity that can only be achieved in truth, is about helping each of us follow God’s plan to be all that we were made to be. It’s about making us heroic lovers like our model, our game plan, Jesus Christ.

Jesus went to the cross to show us what true love means as members of the team whose only play is the Cross imitating the love of Jesus Christ we must choose to love each other by helping each other, ihis is what it means to be one.

Choose to make this team, this ship’s crew, your family. Help one another always to grow in holiness, in the Church, so that one day we can together share in the victory of Heaven.