Become what you receive.

Teaching Mass III

By: Rev. Fr. Ronnie Floyd, STL

Given at St. Patrick's in Wareham

on November 14th, 2010

In one of my favorite movies, the Godfather, a Cardinal talking with Michael Corleone talks a stone from the bottom of a fountain. And showing the stone to the Godfather, he notes, "this stone has been sitting at the bottom of this fountain for a long time hundreds of years even." Then Cracking it open, he says, "and yet it is still dry inside. This is like the faith and men's hearts. For a thousand years Europe has been emersed in Christianity
and yet it has not penetrated."

The famous English author and reporter G.K. Chesterton makes this same observation, saying: Christianity has not been tried and found wanting, it has been found difficult and not tried.

Today we arrive at the last part of our teaching Mass, and we are asked to consider the Communion rite. In the Liturgy of the Word we began our prayer of the Mass by recalling God's mighty deeds and promises, using these memories to direct our prayer, asking God to do for us what he promised to do for our forefathers.

In the Liturgy of the Word, we asked God's Spirit to come upon the Church--and to CHANGE--common things Bread and Wine into the actual Body and Blood of Christ. In doing so, we prayed that the same Spirit of God, would also change us into Christ's mystical body, into the Church,
into Saints destined to sing the joyful song "Holy Holy Holy" together with the Saints forever in Heaven.

And now today, we consider the communion rite--which is also know as:

the procedure for shuffling up to the Altar to receive Communion so that we can get out of here as quick as we can. Right?

You know one of the great reforms of the second Vatican Council was to rethink the meaning of this part of the Mass completely. In the "old days" many priests viewed this part pragmatically
as a necessary evil--the way we give all you folks the fruit of the Mass--the Eucharist.
In fact before 1962 the communion of the faithful, wasn't a necessary part of the Mass--it could be, and routinely was, simply skipped!

Just think about how much shorter Mass would be if we didn't have to wait for all you folks to come up to the altar to receive communion! And after all, Mass real is about getting an obligation
out of the way as quick as possible--right?

WRONG! Mass is the Divine Liturgy, a word that I have used for the last two weeks without defining. Divine, of course, simply means having to do with God but Liturgy, is a word we throw around a lot, without understanding. The word means WORK; and so the Divine Liturgy means God's work, and what is He working at? To quote the hymn Amazing Grace, "He saves a wretch like me!"

God is working to save the World--and the gift of His Life, His body and blood on the Cross, is a means to this end. As I said in my homily, last week, changing bread and wine, into His body and blood, is not just a parlor trick, It's an invitation to receive Him into our hearts and be transformed by Him--to become like Christ to become sons and daughters in the Son,
so that we can grow ever closer to and eventually at the end of our life enter in to the presence of God, His interpersonal love story, forever in Heaven.

If this is what the Son of God was born to do, giving His life to you on the Cross, then receiving communion must be a central part of the God's work, the Divine Liturgy. But just receiving the Body and Blood is not enough, we must be humble before him and open to His Liturgy,
the work He wants to do in our soul.

Remember that rock, taken out of the fountain. Receiving communion each Sunday, being surround it by it doesn't mean that it is going to penetrate us. And although we receive the Body of Christ, as a symbol of God's desire to penetrate our heart and our desire for God to enliven our souls with God's life. If we do so in Bad Faith, with sin on our heart, we make that communion we receive a LIE.

People often think that the Church is on some sort of power trip when she teaches that if you are in a state of grave sin you shouldn't receive communion. When in reality, we are saying that if you have been shoveling manure all day, and your hands are dirty, you shouldn't shake the President of the United States, of for that matter anyone's, hand.

It doesn't do us any good to receive Communion, and spiritually spit it out because we have committed adultery, or murder, theft, or lying. It doesn't do us any good to receive God's life within us if we don't make Him #1 in our life, if we misuse his holy name, or don't worship him each week on Sunday. It's a lie, and a lie to the ultimate lie detector, the God of Truth.

That's why St. Paul warns us: whosoever shall eat this bread, or drink the chalice of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and of the blood of the Lord.

When the priest hold's up Jesus' Body and Blood, saying behold the Lamb of God, we make it our prayer--that God might heal us make us worthy to receive such a great gift--but for this prayer to be sincere--we must "confess our sins to on another" so that the Church, which Jesus gave the keys to the Kingdom to might set us free to be able to worthily receive Him.

I would like to end with a little story--a priest friend was telling me the other day how when he was a Child, after Mass, if he had been good, his parents would take him to a local bakery and let him buy whatever pastry he wanted. He always wanted a jelly donut.

One day he asked his mother, "what happens to the jelly donut after I eat it?"

His mother looked at him and smiled and said, "well if you chew it very carefully, it goes down your throat, into your stomach, and then becomes a part of you."

Holding his hand up to the light and looking at his hand, he said, "but I don't see it?"

His mother responded, "you might not see it, because it breaks into tiny piece which strengthens every part of your body."

When, we receive Jesus, reverently either by making a throne with our hands or by opening our mouth allowing the Lord to feed us like a little child and we spiritually chew on the Body of Christ really thinking about the gift of Love Jesus is giving us, dying for us on the cross to feed us with His own body and Blood then we become, what we receive, we become truly like God,
just as Jesus became truly Man.

Lord I want to see.

Teaching Mass II

By: Rev. Fr. Ronnie P. Floyd, STL

Given at St. Patrick's in Wareham

On November 7th, 2010

C.S. Lewis, the great English Novelist, maybe best know for His, "Chronicles of Narnia," grew up an Atheist, and yet at the mid-point of His life had a great conversion to Chrisitianity, caused in part by another great author, JRR Tolkien, a devout Catholic.

And so as a convert, or maybe one should say a revert, having come back to the faith of his childhood, Lewis had great insights into the experiences of non-practicing, non-believing people. Insights that he put to great use in latter life, as he tried to share the good news of the Gospel with so many people who had written it off as irrelevant. Much of his evangelical and apologetically efforts can be seen in his writings. Even his children's stories has strong Christian overtones. This is particularly true of one of His best works of adult fiction, which every Christian should read. The Screwtape Letters are a fictional account of the corresponded between two demons engaged in the work of stealing souls.

In one of my favorite passages, their target, an average man, has fallen into the camp of the Enemy, that is the Church. As a result, the senior demon writes the junior tempter
to express his displeasure. He notes however that all is not lost. Saying:

One of our great allies at present is the Church itself. Do not misunderstand me. [not] the Church as we see her spread but through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners.

That, I confess, is a spectacle which makes I our boldest tempters uneasy. But fortunately it is quite invisible to these humans. All your patient sees is the half-finished, sham Gothic erection on the new building estate. When he goes inside, he sees the local grocer with rather in oily expression on his face bustling up to offer him one shiny little book containing a liturgy which neither of them understands, and one shabby little book containing corrupt texts of a number of religious lyrics, mostly bad, and in very small print.

When he gets to his pew and looks round him he sees just that selection of his neighbours whom he has hitherto avoided. You want to lean pretty heavily on those neighbours.

Make his mind flit to and fro between an expression like "the body of Christ" and the actual faces in the next pew...

Does this sound familiar? How often do we hear the truth that the Church is the mystical Body of Christ, One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic and then look around and think with typical New England cynicism: YEAH RIGHT!

Friends look to your right, and to your left, look at the person in front of you and behind you; these are God's Children, people called to be saints in heaven, they are irrepeatable GIFTS from God to the World, they are gifts to you. God has placed them in your life, to help you be happy, and grow in Holiness. The splendor of the Church is all around you in the POTENTIAL that each of us has as Baptized Children of God, and yet so often we don't see it!

Today, we will consider the second major part of the Mass the preface and Liturgy of the Eucharist, which is the mystery of the unseen reality of what is going on in the Church at every moment, of every day--the sanctification of the World, through the Church by the Sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the Cross.

As the Liturgy of the Eucharist begins, simple gifts are brought forward gifts that symbolize human life--bread the basic food of the world and wine, a symbol of the celebration of life. They are plain, ordinary, and yet these ordinary symbols show us that all things are possible for God. God takes these ordinary things, and promises to transform them into something extra-ordinary! The Body and the Blood of Christ!

SO THAT, I think we often forget why Jesus changes the bread and wine into His Body and Blood He does it SO THAT we who eat His Body and Drink His Blood might be transformed, just like the bread and the wine! Into sons and daughters of God. As the Greek Fathers used to say:
God became man so that man could become God. And just like the Body and the Blood, this transformation, that is taking place on the Altar AND in us is spirit and truth. We like the Eucharist, continue to look the same, perhaps we even act the same, once we are changed, and yet we believe that we are at the level of our being different given POWER to become God's Children, saints in Christ.

My friends, don't be blinded by your eyes! Don't let sight get in the way of your seeing, what God is doing for and in you right now! Like the mother of the seven brothers in the book of Maccabees realize that there is more to life than what we see, and feel, and touch. Realize that life is a gift from God that must be given back to Him, as a spotless and unstained Sacrificed to His Glory. Realize as Jesus says in the Gospel that the physical realities and institutions of this life are only a precussor of the REALITY of Heaven that we are made for.

Live for that reality!

Open the eyes of your Soul to see the good things that is doing. See that all the promises made to
the Patriarchs and Prophets, Apostles and Evangelists are now, at this moment being fulfilled in Heaven and on Earth at this Altar.

Homily for my brothers wedding

What is Love?

A Homily for the Nuptial Mass

of Michael and Karen Floyd

given at St. Anthony of Padua Church

On the Feast of Januarius the 18th of September 2010

By the Rev. Fr. Ronnie Paul Floyd, STL

What is Love? It’s consoling, at some level, to know, as St. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians demonstrates that even 2 millenia ago the meaning of the word “love” was so elusive. Love is one of those things that is bigger than you and I, that can be glimpsed partially, but never wholly understood or comprehended.

Ultimately, St. John answers the question for us when he unequivocally states: God is Love! Not that that definition helps us, because God is as unknowable as Love itself. Like God, Love is something, or rather should I say someone to be experienced, and enjoyed, but never fully comprehended.

And so today you two are undertaking something that you can’t even begin to understand the consequences of...

This is why as Christians we believe that only those who have heard and accepted the Gospel of Jesus Christ can enter into the Sacrament of Marriage. True, marriage has been around a long time, long before the birth of Christ and the institution of the 7 Sacraments. In fact it’s been around ever since Adam and Eve, In the beginning God created man, In the image and likeness of God He create him, Male and female he create them. God created marriage from the beginning to be a privileged tool for our sanctification. Marriage is the way God wants most people to become holy, to become saints. God planned from all time that men and women, because they complement each other perfectly, should help each other to grow in self-knowledge and self-mastery, to grow in TRUE LOVE so that they might learn how God loves them and how they must love God through each other. SIN ruined this for humanity.

Michael and Karen, remember this, sin is not wrong because God says it is wrong, God says sin is wrong because it is wrong, because it ruins us and our relationships, making it first difficult, and then impossible to love. We see plenty of relationships and friendships, plenty of marriages ruined by SIN on a daily basis! because of sin, so often marriage is thought of today as a relationship of convenience and mutual benefit.

TODAY, you are not undertaking a natural marriage, TODAY, you are not entering into a relationship of convenience, TODAY, you are being asked to freely choose to enter into the sacrament of marriage A Sacrament because it is an outward sign of the Love God poured out for us on Calvary.

Our society asks nothing of you to enter into marriage, and that’s why so many of marriages fail. In contrast, Our Church and our God ask everything of you demanding, that you give everything to each other like Christ did on the Cross for us, and for the salvation of the World. Today you are taking up your vocation, your sacred calling by means of this vocation, God wishes to make you holy and sanctify the whole world.

If you do not give each other everything, living each day not for pleasure, or laughs, material possessions, or comfort but for eternal life, then you will fail, harming not only your own souls, but the souls of all those around you. The task is daunting, and in fact impossible, if not for our Faith! It’s only because of the power of the Cross, that we dare to undertake Sacramental Marriage. To make this work you must give 100% of your life to each other depending 100% on the help of God, and the prayers and intercessions of the Angels and Saints.

In a few minutes you will be asked to make a choice to love each other forever, for better and for worse. And there will be “worse” - there will be sufferings! But if you love each other, and place all your faith in God you can and WILL be HAPPY, despite life’s difficulties. This is the good news, the Gospel, of Jesus Christ.

By loosing your life you gain it!

True love is a mystery, that we can ever delve deeper into, always being transformed, more and more, into the image of Christ Jesus. And it’s especially when we suffer joyfully with Jesus, that God purifies our love and makes it most true. True love can be seen, if not understood, on the Cross, where the creator of all things, allowed himself to be tortured, abused, and murdered by us, His creatures, so that we might see what true love is and begin to live it. On the Cross, Jesus shows us that Love is patient and kind, he shows that it’s never rude, never easily angered, it doesn’t hold grudges, it is not self seeking! How often we have heard these words. Remember that they are meaningless if they are not understood in the context of the Cross of Jesus Christ. Fundamentally, Jesus shows us that Love is a choice--not a feeling or emotion, not a physical attraction, not a mutually beneficial social arrangement. Love is a stubborn choice to desire do whatever we honestly believe is good for the other person, 100% of the time, with NO concern for your own desires.

As Jesus said before the passion, no one takes my life from me, I freely give it. Today you must freely give up your life--not just by jumping in front of a bullet to save each other--in comparison to what you are doing, that’s easy! It’s when you start getting on each other’s nerve or when one of you hurts the other, and when you are afraid of the future, that you must die to self. It sounds so scary, but always remember what our Savior told us: Be not afraid, says the Lord, I go before you always. The bitterness of life’s difficulties just makes the joys more sweet for those who trust in God. God loves you, and wants you to be happy, trust in him and your marriage will be full of joy and laughs and surprises, as well as some tears, until at last you come to the everlasting joy of heaven.

If your faith makes you ready to undertake Christian Marriage draw near to God to make known the desire of your heart.

Mass the Way God made it!

recessional, originally uploaded by fr.ron_floyd.

I was so happy with the way Mass turned out. Everything was almost perfect.

SMR Class of 2010 after Graduation

SMR Class of 2010 after Graduation, originally uploaded by fr.ron_floyd.

After Celebrating their graduation Mass and conferring their decrees. Thank you guys for giving me an opportunity to wear my academic biretta ; )

Philemon

A Homily for the 23rd Sunday in ordinary time

given at St. Patrick's Church

by Rev. Fr. Ronnie P. Floyd, STL

Of all Paul’s Epistles, the little read letter to Philemon, written while Paul was imprisoned in Rome, quickly became one of my favorites in Seminary. That’s probably because it is one of the shortest letters, and thus it was the easiest question to get on the exams. I was lucky because when I took my exam on Pauline letters. I did in fact get this Epistle as the one I had to talk about for eight minutes.

The letter is a personal letter, unlike most of Paul’s other letters in Sacred Scriptures. It is written to a man named Philemon about his runaway slave, Onesemus, who ran off to follow Paul and who Paul is sending back now to his life of slavery. One of the reasons I like this letter is that it startles our modern sensibilities!

When we hear the word slavery we think of racism, cruelty, dehumanization, and injustice. Of course the first thing we must realize is that slavery in the ancient world was much different from slavery in the 1800s. It wasn’t primarily based on race but was primarily a political and economic arrangement. This isn’t to say that it was a good thing, but that maybe it wasn’t as bad as we imagine today. In reality, in many places slavery was much the same as employment at a big company prior to the 1980s

It was a lifelong relationship between employer and employee that demanded some sacrifices, that was often one sided, but that also promised stability and job security. In these days of lay-offs, constant company hopping, and employment anxiety I can imagine many wish for the good old days when a companies and workers felt responsible for each other. When you got a job and you only left when you retired.

Anyway like all human systems, slavery in the ancient world was a structure not always good, but often contained good elements. It’s to this type of slavery the Paul returns Onesemus and his reason is interesting! Paul trusts that no matter the situation one finds oneself in, there is always the possibility for good to come out of it, if only we trust in God. This is particularly interesting because Paul himself is imprisoned awaiting his execution in Rome.

Paul is not preaching a form of pious quietism, He is not saying that we should not speak out about injustice but he is pointing to the fact that in speaking out and working for justice our primary concern ought always to be spiritual salvation. Onesemus may have been at some level justified in running away but Paul worries that Onesemus’ escape might adversely effect the faith of his master Philemon, a fledgling Christian himself who now might feel wronged by the loss of Onesemus.’

Paul uses a beautiful play on words in the original Greek saying that Onesemus as a slave was before useless to Philemon, This is striking because slaves are meant to be useful to their masters, but Paul is suggesting that what is really important is our soul, and so whatever work Onesemus once did for Philemon, did not help him obtain eternal life. Now sending Onesemus back to slavery, Paul sends him back in charity, urging Philemon to receive him not just as a slave, but also as a brother, so that Onesemus might be useful to Philemon’s salvation. Paul also realizes that Onesemus’ physical freedom, is less important than his spiritual freedom, which He gained from Christ in Baptism, and now is exercising by embracing his Cross

I love this story because when we really start to think about it it really challenges the way we live.

How often do we fight for the things of the world, forgetting about our souls? How often do we assert our rights, with no consideration of how our use of rights affects others. We receive rights from God, not so that we can do whatever we want, but so that we can accomplish our purpose in life, our vocation from God, and our duty to our brothers and sisters.

Being a Catholic means becoming like Christ who gave up everything to God for us, for our salvation. Christ could have claimed rights. He could have decried the injustice of the situation. He could have defended himself. But he didn’t! Scriptures tell us He went to the cross silent like a lamb before the shearer. Jesus died silently because it was God’s will which would save our souls. This is the example we are meant to follow. This is the example Paul is suggesting in the Letter to Philemon.

God’s wisdom is an all knowing wisdom that sees all things as they are. As Catholics, the point of our life of Faith is not to fight to make this a perfect world. It’s too late for that, sin has doomed the world. Our job is to fight to save souls, by surrendering our will to the will of God and seeking to do it at all times!

Each of us have Philemon moments: when we feel unjustly offended by our brothers and sisters, even when perhaps we are at fault. And each of us have Onesemus moments: when we are truly suffering an injustice and we feel like we want to escape, to protect ourselves.

Paul is suggesting that whether we are at fault or not, each of us, in relationship with each other, and destined for eternal life must take responsibility for each other. We must stop being useless to each other by seeking our own best interest but instead always seek the best interest of others. Maybe you are a wife that feels wronged by your husband; Or a brother wronged by a brother; Or a parent wronged by a child, or vice versa; Or a friend wronged by a friend, or a stranger, or an enemy. The reality is that we all sin, and that we all hurt each other, so long as we are looking out for the RIGHTS of #1. There is no justice under the law because we are all sinners, we have all contributed to the cycle of violence that is sin, instead there is only mercy and forgiveness, which starts when we consider the good of the other before our own good, our own pride, our own injury. This is what true love means, and requires!

Freedom--Pt 1

Homily for the 13th Sunday of Ordinary Time
Given at St. Patrick's Wareham
By Rev. Ronnie P. Floyd, STL

Near the end of World War II, two men both 47 years of age died outside the Polish village of Oświęcim. Both had been born to Catholic families, had learned their Catechism and served as Altar boys at the Holy Mass, both were meticulous souls, who labored to do their best at whatever they undertook and yet one died within the walls of the prison camp the Nazis called Aushwitz, a Martyr for Love, while the other died outside these walls, convicted of atrocities and sentenced to death for his part in the Holocaust.

What was the difference between these two men? Who were in so many ways alike? Freedom.

As we approach the celebration of our country’s birth on the fourth of July I always find myself reflecting on freedom. Freedom as it is currently understood, freedom as it was understood in 1776, but most importantly freedom as God made it to be.

You see, freedom is central to Biblical Faith! And because of this, while the Catholic Church is not, was never, and never will be a democracy—none-the-less, freedom, has always been central to our Catholic faith.

As St. Paul insists: “For freedom I have set you free.”

St. Augustine taught that freedom was the way that we were made in the image of God and that it was the means God gave man to be in the likeness of God. You see all other creatures, though they can make choices, which might in some sense seem free, are in fact slaves to their created, material nature. Slaves to a nature, which many pessimists about humanity have concluded we share: selfishness; the innate desire to survive, thrive, and propagate, what Darwin called “survival of the fittest.” Darwin was speaking of evolutionary biology, but sociologists quickly adapted this genetic theory to human behavior.

Of course we do in fact share this animalistic nature, after all we have bodies and are animals. But as Christians and Catholics WE MUST BELIEVE that we are more than our material existence—this is why Jesus says in the Gospel today: let the dead bury the dead What we call the spirit and the immortal soul, is by definition the ability to transcend and be free of the material, making material things a means to an end, stepping stones on the path to the eternal

As Aristotle notes we are not just animals, but Rational Animals Homosapien—creatures who know, and who know that we know It’s this self-knowledge and awareness, that is the basis of freedom human and divine. Man doesn’t just know stuff, he knows that he knows things and in this knowledge he is forced to confront the question: WHY?

An animal may choose to kill or not to kill, but we are able to ask ourselves, and to struggle with,

the question—Not just to kill or not to kill, but, if I kill, why do I do it, [and vice versa].

This “why question”, which adults often get tired of quickly when it is first discovered by a 2 year old, is truly the most human of questions, even if a 2 yr old lacks the capacity to answer or even understand the question

The “why question,” when we are intellectually honest, AND not distracted by the many tasks of life in the material world, ALWAYS and ultimately leads to two questions: Why do I exist rather than not? And assuming we come to the rational conclusion, that we exist for no reason other than that God created us. We must ask ourselves, or actually ask our God, Why was I created? It’s only in this context, in the context of rationality And in the light of truth, that we can be truly free.

Freedom is not just the ability to choose A or B, eandomly or based on some whim or statistical variable, as people often mean today. Rats in a maze can make these sorts of choices!

Freedom, in the biblical perspective--a perspective,we should note, that was shared by most all of the founders--is the ability to choose to be more than what we physically are, to be, as the Psalmist sings, little less than gods. Freedom is the ability to choose to be like God: to give and expect no return to love even when offended to forgive even when forgiveness is not sought and to see the goodness in all created things, even when they are corrupted by evil.

Freedom is meaningless without purpose, it necessarily degrades into anarchy and chaos or totalitarianism and dehumanization. As the famous atheist philosopher John Paul Satre, once honestly noted, without God, other people become our hell.

To be free we need not just the ability to choose, which in fact people always have whether in a democracy, the best of monarchies, or the worst dictatorship. To be free we need to have the ability to choose, and the knowledge to know what to choose, or at least where to look to find such knowledge. A free society therefore is not a society without any laws, but a society whose laws and culture promote the search for truth so that people might make truly free, informed, choices.

It is for freedom he has set us free because only free can one truly love. God created us free and sets us free once more by the example of His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, who shows us how to transcened our material needs and live for God.

Rudolph Hoess and Raymond Kolbe, those two men who were so alike, and died such similar deaths will ever be remembered in very different ways. Hoess, the commandant of Aushwitz, will forever be held in infamy for his part in the murder of millions Kolbe, whose religious name is St. Maximillian, will forever be held in honor for giving up his life to save another. The difference between these men, their use of freedom. As Hoess notes in a final letter to his family:

During my long isolated sojourn in prison, I have had ample time and peace to reflect on my whole life…I see today very clearly what for me is very hard and bitter, that the whole ideology, and the whole world in which I believed so firmly, was resting on completely false foundation and certainly had to fall into ruins some day… Likewise did my fall from faith in God depend wholly on my false foundations? This was very difficult to overcome. Nevertheless, I have recovered my faith in God.”

True freedom is the ability to reflect on what we are and why we are what we are and having discovered a firm foundation for our actions to act in accord with our nature, to be who we were created to be: sons and daughters created in God’s image and likeness

St. Maximillian’s faith was always engaging reason allowing him to found the firm foundations need to use his freedom well.

In contrast Hoess bought into the Nazi ideology with blind faith and these false foundations led to his ruin. And let’s not fool ourselves—Hoess and so many like him didn’t choose evil overtly, he fell into evils trap, this lie, this slavery, because he used his freedom irresponsibly.

It’s in freedom and love that we are made in God’s image and likeness, pray today that each of us might take seriously the responsibility that comes with our freedom and putting it to good use.