Heaven

Some messages are Wind Song commercials: simply unforgettable.  They can be funny, sad, quiet, loud, true-to-life— or sometimes so bad— that they linger.  But the best ones are authentic and captivating, inspiring google searches even when the topic is familiar.

Today’s “sermon” hit the spot like an E. F. Hutton commercial— people listened— and some of us were so invested that we even blurted out responses to Fr. Joe’s rhetorical questions.  But that’s what heaven does: it totally gets our attention.

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The following, recorded, transcribed, and edited, was delivered by Fr. Joseph Craft at the St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans.

We have some spectacular readings today.  We need to find out what exactly happened on Mt. Horeb.  How many of you have got that great historical mind that you can remember all the important events that happened on Mt. Horeb?

The burning bush!

When Moses goes down to Egypt he sets Israel free and, when he passes Mt. Horeb again, God makes a covenant with them.  They go out of the desert and, when they come back, Moses has this wonderful conversation with God that includes the Ten Commandments.  Years later, Elijah comes along after slaying all the prophets of Baal and, after running from the queen, Jezebel, lands on Mt. Horeb and finds God not in the earthquake or the fire or the storm, but in the small voice.

What are the words we hear today that God promises Moses on that mountain?  They will worship God on that mountain.  That’s what we need to get so far.  God wants to be in relationship with his people, so he gives us a place to encounter him and worship him.

Do you know where we stand today?  At sea level?

We stand kind of on Mt. Horeb.  We stand in a place where we can worship God.  That’s why we come to Mass.

Some people tell me, “You know, padre, I don’t get much out of the Mass.”  I say, “That’s great!  It’s not really about you.  It’s about us giving worship to God.”

That’s what we’re here about.  So, okay, let’s try to figure out where I’m making the connection between Mt. Horeb and here.  Did you hear the gospel?

Jesus is teaching us how to be in relationship with the Father: to worship God and to give him praise for all he’s done.  This is a beautiful priestly prayer, and we are a priestly people.  When we were baptized, we were anointed priest, prophet, and king; so today’s gospel reading is helping us know what we’re here after.

Does anybody know what we’re here after?

We’re here after the hereafter: heaven on earth.  When you and I receive the Word of God and the Eucharist, we’re supposed to become what we receive.  Does that make sense?

Let me break it open one more time: Does anybody know what heaven’s going to be like?  Has anybody been there?

I can tell you what heaven’s going to be like.  And, no, it won’t be angels playing violins on the clouds.  It will be where everyone is doing the will of the Father.

We come here to worship God.  He gives us the grace to hear the Word: how to live as he’s commanded.  And then he gives us the Eucharist: the grace to live that out.  We make heaven on earth by doing the will of the Father, and we start by getting outside of ourselves and giving God praise and worship.

Let me just hit a few more things.

Do you know when we worship God here on Mt. Horeb?  It’s when we genuflect.  It’s when we stand for the gospel.  It’s when we kneel.  But let me name two other really great places of worship.  You ready?

The first is after we’ve heard the Word of God, after we’ve listened to the sermon, after we’ve done the priestly prayers.  It’s the little blessed moment of silence, after we’ve received the Eucharist, when we ask God to help us do his will to make heaven on earth.  And, do you know the next most important time when we give that worship?  It’s when we wait for the priest to walk all the way out of church.  Sometimes people think that’s because the priest likes to have all that attention or so he can give that one parishioner that needs it that serious look: “You’d better do that this week!”  Nope.

Do you know why we ask you to stay here till the very end?

It’s so you can kneel one more time and say, “God, thank you for this encounter.  Now I’m getting ready to go out and live the hardest part of my week— away from you this close— so give me the grace to use what I’ve received.”

My brothers and sisters, today, let us worship.  Let us give God praise.  And let us make heaven here on earth.

Links of interest…  Archdiocese of New Orleans…  Commercials: E. F. Hutton / Wind Song (more)…  Elijah (journey – mystery of God’s silent speech – on Mt. Horeb – story)…  God speaks to us on tops of mountains…  How Jesus makes heaven present to us today…  Jezebel…  Moses: about / burning bush…  Most Americans believe in heaven… and hell…  Mountains, the Bible, & divine encounters...  St. Louis Cathedral: daily saints / history / Mass / photos / tours / website...  Prophet’s legacy…  Seeking Mt. Horeb…  Sermon vs. homily…  Ten Commandments…  Time to decide— reflection on a question from Elijah…  Why praise & worship music is praise, but not worship…

WP posts…  Beatitudes…  Blessed blessing…  Collective heart…  Corpus Christi…  Foundation…  Freedom…  God’s love letter…  Graces shared…  Mary’s gifts…  Most Holy Trinity…  Perfect prayer…  Salt and light…  St. Joseph…  Sunset…  Truth

St. Joseph

I love, love, love Joseph so much that our youngest kid bears his name, one of two, just like my brother.  And, for years— dare I say decades— St. Joseph has been shadowing me, like the time we visited St. Bonaventure in Detroit and, suddenly, I shimmered within sensing something, someone, very near.  I looked up from my camera and— whoa— there he was, looking ever so statuesque just three feet away.  Goosebumps!  And, it seems that, wherever we go, he beckons, as he did for us to belong to St. Joseph’s parish and for me to start the church blog.  So, naturally, I was all ears to hear this evening’s homily at Vespers.  Thank you!

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Today’s homily, recorded, transcribed, and edited, was delivered by the Very Reverend Stanley Galvon, rector at Our Lady of the Holy Rosary Cathedral in Vancouver, Canada.

So, as you could tell from the gospel, this is all about St. Joseph.  Pope Francis has given us this year to focus on him.  He’s a bit of a mysterious figure in Bible in that he doesn’t say one word, but maybe that’s okay.

Someone said the most important part of conversation is the pause between words and, in the case of Joseph, it’s a long pause because he really doesn’t say anything at all.  But it’s how he’s present and how he’s doing things that’s so helpful for all of us in crazy times as these are.  And you can tell from the gospel reading from St. Matthew that Joseph was involved in crazy times as well.

Danger

First, he was ordered to go to Bethlehem to register even though his wife was very pregnant and travel arrangements were very primitive.  And, then, once the child was born, it seems that the three kings, the Magi, tipped off Herod that this child could be a competitor; so Herod decided to eliminate the problem by eliminating the child.  Kind of what we see these days in terms of solving your problems by violence.  That’s ongoing human twist thinking: Solve your problems with violence.

We have, then, Joseph in a dream being told to go to Egypt.  So, that’s not like jumping on a little commuter plane and flying to Egypt.  In those days there was everything from robbers to bad people along the way of any route and, in this case, soldiers from Herod who were chasing them.

Safety

There’s a delightful story about tinsel.  If you’ve ever seen a Christmas tree with those silver streamers on it, it’s called tinsel; and it comes from a legend about Joseph, Mary, and Jesus.

On their difficult way to Egypt, Herod’s soldiers were almost catching them, so Joseph hid the family in a little cave.  And there was a spider inside the cave that, somehow, was used by God to quickly weave a web at the entrance to the cave.  So, when soldiers were about to go into the cave, they saw the spider web.

“No one has disturbed that spider web,” they said, “so they can’t be in there.  Let’s go on.”  So, that’s where the legend led to the use of tinsel on Christmas trees.

Training

It’s a delightful story, but behind all of this is the idea that God works with people in difficult times.  And, part of the difficulties these days is how each of us is trained because it’s handy to have good manners— to say “thank you,” things like that— but moral training is also really important, which is why Joseph was very special: He protected Mary and Jesus from people like Herod, and he trained Jesus.

You might say, “Well, Jesus is God, so he doesn’t need training.”  Well, that’s kind of the mystery of who Jesus is.  He’s totally God, but he’s also totally human, without any kind of contradiction between the two of them.  It’s a mystery how that works.  But, in any case, Jesus had to learn things.

The Book of Proverbs says: “Train up the child in the way he should go and, when he is old, he will not depart from it” (22:6).  That’s a big challenge to parents about things a child has to learn— languages, culture, religion, government, values, customs, conventions— so, if you don’t learn those as a child, you’re not trained in them.  And training involves more than being taught, since training goes from your head to your heart where something lasts.  So, if a child doesn’t learn these things in the heart, then what can happen?

Moses

Let’s talk about another little person to give us a sense of what this might mean.

We’ve all heard about Moses, born to Amran and Jochebed from the priestly Levite tribe at the time when Israelites were getting stronger.  A new pharaoh, who didn’t like the idea of the Israelites having children, came onto the scene and commanded that all the boys of Israelites be killed, while the girls could live as slaves.  Amran and Jochebed hid Moses by the Nile and, when the pharaoh’s daughter went for a bath, she saw the child in the basket and wanted to care for him.  Then, with her approval, Miriam, sister of Moses, managed to place the child with their birth mother so that he passed for an Egyptian prince— until he murdered one of the Egyptians working with the Israelites and had to leave the palace.

So, Moses was the great, courageous leader of the Israelites about fifteen hundred years or so before the time of Jesus.  The Israelites had been slaves in Egypt for four-hundred years and, at that right time, God wanted them to be freed from slavery; so God chose Moses to lead them to the Promised Land, the land of milk and honey.

The story goes along in the Book of Exodus: God calls Moses and Aaron, the brother who becomes high-priest and spokesman for Moses, who takes on the pharaoh.  And their sister, Miriam, is a prophetess, but also a complainer.  The three siblings took on a mess but, because their parents had trained them as best they could, they didn’t forget who God was even after they had sinned.  And, somehow, they came back into God’s graces.

Similarly, Joseph and Mary trained Jesus in his ways of understanding the goodness and character of the heavenly Father.  So, where does that leave us?

Lesson

The encouraging message is that, despite our strengths and weaknesses, we can always come back to God and “be diligent, intentional, continually seeking ways to weave the goodness and character of God into the day’s events” (Deuteronomy 6:6-7).

St. Joseph reminds us that our heavenly Father is still training us.  We’re here at Vespers tonight because of the training we received somehow, somewhere.  This is our opportunity to thank God for that training and to pray for others: our parents, children without parents, parents who are discouraged or twisted up somehow.

Our prayers can help!  We are not alone.  Joseph, representative par excellence of our heavenly Father, is praying for us, too, in ways deeper than words can convey.  So, I’ll finish with a little prayer that Pope Francis wrote to thank St. Joseph.

Prayer

Hail, guardian of the Redeemer, spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary, to you God entrusted his only son.  In you, Mary placed her trust.  With you, Christ became man.  Blessed Joseph, to us, too, show yourself a father and guide us in the path of life.  Obtain for us grace, mercy, and courage.  And defend us from every evil.  Amen.

September 29, 2021

Those who give themselves to prayer should in a special manner have always a devotion to St. Joseph; for I know not how any man can think of the Queen of the angels, during the time that she suffered so much with the Infant Jesus, without giving thanks to St. Joseph for the services he rendered them then (St. Teresa of Ávila).

Links of interest…  Aaron: brother & spokesman…  Amran: father of Moses…  Books: Deuteronomy (about) / Exodus (2:1-10 – about – summary – videos) / Proverbs (about)…  Christmas spider: books / legend / ornaments (more) / poem / story / tinsel…  Jochebed: wise woman…  Miriam: prophetess…  Our Lady of the Holy Rosary Cathedral: architecture / bells / crucifix / history / Mass: archives & livestream / vespers (pdf) / website / windows…  Moses, Miriam, & Aaron challenge God…  Pope Francis on St. Joseph / proclaims year of St. Joseph…  St. Joseph: for fathers / eight powerful prayers / quotes / Wednesdays…  Who were the Levites…

WP posts…  Beatitudes…  Blessed blessing…  Collective heart…  Corpus Christi…  Foundation…  Freedom…  God’s love letter…  Graces shared…  Heaven…  Mary’s gifts…  Most Holy Trinity…  Perfect prayer…  Salt and light…  Sunset…  Truth