The other day, I was reading a book on “conversion.” In it, the author told a story of a 13-year-old Jewish boy, with his two Catholic friends. They walked into the Cathedral of Notre Dame, shortly after World War II ended. This boy had survived the concentration camps.

Now, the boys were joking around, and the two Catholics dared him to go into the confessional and give a confession. He agreed. So, they told him what to say, the normal responses and such, and he entered.

The priest, however, knew . . . and called him on it. But before the boy left, he gave him a penance anyways. He told him to go over to the side chapel, where he would find a large crucifix, and a man, nailed to it. He told him to kneel down and to look into the eyes of that man - not just a glance, but to truly “look” at him. Once he had done so, the priest instructed him to slowly say 10 times the words “I do not care what you suffered for me on the Cross.”

The boy made it to seven. Then broke down in tears.

In that moment, he experienced something. He wasn’t looking at “just anyone.” He had looked into the face of Love itself, hanging on a cross. That boy likely knew many things that boys that age shouldn’t know - hatred, suffering, humiliation, death. We can harden ourselves, when faced with those realities over time.

But when we encounter true, authentic love? It changes everything.

St. Thomas had the exact same encounter in our Gospel today. Unfortunately, Thomas tends to receive a bit of mockery for his reaction in the Gospel. “Doubting Thomas.”

Maybe it’s easy to look down on him, but I think his reaction actually makes sense. The last time Thomas saw him, he was on the cross. For Thomas, Jesus was his entire world. He left everything to follow him - for three years! He thought he was “the one,” the Messiah, the King who would free Israel, destroy Rome, re-establish Israel as a kingdom.

He lost everything on Good Friday - his entire world was nailed to that cross. his friend, his future - gone. And if that wasn’t enough, Thomas’s last interaction with Jesus was to run away - when his friend needed him the most, he ran.

When your heart is broken, our reaction is typically self-preservation. We harden. And when we do, it’s difficult to let hope enter in. He hoped for something once and look where it got him. To ask him to hope again? “We’ve seen the Lord?”

And then there’s the shame and the fear - the shame of abandoning him. And the fear that, if what they said was true, what will he say to me after all I’ve done?

I was ordained a deacon on the vigil of Divine Mercy. And during the ordination, there’s a moment where you prostrate yourself - basically, you lay on the ground, while the people present pray the “Litany of the Saints,” to intercede on behalf of the soon-to-be-ordained.

For me, most of my thoughts during this were the same as Thomas.

I remember thinking, “God, look at all I’ve done - all I’ve failed to do. I’m a sinner. And one day, I’m going to have my own “Thomas moment,” where I stand before you, and we re-play all of it. And, I got to be honest, I don’t know that you’re going to like what you see.

Why do you want me?”

Maybe Thomas doubted the Lord’s resurrection. But how many of us doubt his love for us? His compassion? How many of us will continue to carry the heaviest of boulders, the guilt and the shame of it all, simply because it seems more comfortable to carry them, than it does to reveal it to him?

What are we afraid of?

The thing about God is, he sees us perfectly as we are. We just don’t see him, or who he really is.

But what we do have, is all these “ideas” about who He is. Our own stereotypes and biases, hang-ups and fears. And instead of allowing God to reveal himself, we impose these ideas and make him into a caricature, like a Picasso painting.

But none of those things are real.

What is real, is what we see on the cross. That He permitted the scourging, the abuse, the hatred, abandonment, and even death. He could have done it another way, but that would have only reinforced the caricature. He needed us to truly see him; that God is not merely an all-powerful entity, or an angry, vengeful judge, but that he is something else entirely: love.

But the thing about Divine Love, is that when it encounters the one whom it loves, and sees in that person pain and suffering; brokenness and despair; shame and guilt; unworthiness, regret, fear, and remorse; when it encounters someone like that, it goes by a different name:

Divine Mercy.

I didn’t make that up. JPII calls mercy “love’s second name.” And it’s fitting, because the word mercy comes from the Latin - misericordia - which means, a heart (cordia), that is in misery (miserere), for the other. To “have mercy” is to have a heart in misery with the one we love.

And it’s Divine, because God is Love. Which means . . . it’s perfect. It lacks nothing, nor holds anything back.

But for Divine Mercy to have its effect on us, we have to respond. Love always requires a response - either acceptance or rejection. There is no “in-between.” Thomas accepted it, and said, “My Lord and my God.” Judas rejected it and chose despair and separation.

Maybe you think you’re too far gone - you’ve done too much. That you aren’t worthy. Our Lord said to St. Faustina: “The greater the sinner, the greater the right he has to my mercy.”

So maybe it’s fitting that the privileged place that we encounter Divine Mercy, is where we began - in the confessional. It’s there that you experience an encounter like Thomas, through the priest who stands in the very person of Christ. It’s there that we can just let the burdens go. Where we can hear the words of Christ, “I absolve you of your sins.”

So, I encourage each of you during this Easter season: go to Confession. Invite Christ to share in the woundedness that you carry, so that by his wounds, yours might be healed.

But until then, I would ask you to do something during this Mass. When I lift up the host and the chalice, and you hear the bells ring, simply say the words in your heart, “my Lord and my God.”

Thomas said them. He saw Divine Mercy in the face of his risen Lord. And once he saw, he never looked back.

In our Gospel this morning, we followed the disciples. And we shared in their confusion, amazement, the fear and the joy, as they encountered something that the world had never encountered before. The most incredible thing to have ever been seen:

An empty tomb.

The empty tomb, I think, is something we can easily take for granted. But I promise you, if that tomb weren’t empty, none of you would be here.

If they had visited the tomb on Easter Sunday and a man’s body was still buried, still bound secure by a Roman seal, there would be no Christianity, no reason to celebrate. The name which is we say is “above all names,” would be . . . just another name; another name lost to the pages of history.

Bu an empty tomb - it changes things. It changes everything. And because of that, it’s controversial.

If the tomb was, in fact, empty, then we have to ask what sort of man just walks out of a tomb? Certainly not “just” a man.

But that goes against our experience. Life teaches us that that’s not how it works. When someone dies, they die, right? There must be some “other” explanation.

The scribes and pharisees thought so too - and to make it go away, they paid off the guards to say someone stole the body.

But when Peter stepped into that tomb, he found burial clothes, but they weren’t strewn about or ripped up, as one might expect to find in a grave robbery. The head dressing was even rolled up, placed to the side.

And if they had stolen the body, they certainly wouldn’t have taken the time to unwrap him.

Even today, 2,000 years later, some look for a different answer.

Scientists, historians, archeologists, have all bristled at the notion of an empty tomb. Theories emerged that tried to explain it away.

Because if science can’t explain it, then it must be nonsense, right?

Theologians in the past 200 years or so have tried to “harmonize” an empty tomb with both science and religion, the thought being, let’s make them “play nice.”

The idea being, if we explain or rationalize faith through the lens of science, hopefully, that will bring more people to faith. Make it more “relatable” to modern man, who thinks that all religion is either myth, fantasy, or legend run amuck.

In the 1970s, probably at the height of this thought, one theologian made the argument that the resurrection, rather than being a physical, literal event, was more of an inner, psychological reality.

He explained away the post-resurrection appearances and miracles as “theological interpretations,” written and re-written well after the events took place.

It was part of a broader theological tradition that tried to “demythologize” the Gospel. Jesus didn’t really feed 5,000 people - they just shared what they had. Jesus didn’t really heal anyone - he merely showed solidarity with the sick.

And as for the empty tomb? Who could really say what was true, and what wasn’t?

And so, he argued that the empty tomb was “an unnecessary hypothesis,” and that a bodily resurrection “theologically speaking, has nothing to do with a corpse.”

Rather, what they most likely experienced in the time between our Lord’s death and the beginning of their ministry was an experience of conversion and self-forgiveness. And that from this experience, Jesus was somehow alive once again, within them.

In my opinion . . . he should have stuck with the grave robber story.

Because there’s only one problem with a bodily resurrection having nothing to do with a corpse:

It has everything to do with it.

Brothers and sisters, there’s either a tomb with a body in it, or an empty tomb. It’s binary - one or zero, black or white.

And all of us have to choose which to believe. And you can’t “scientifically prove” either of them.

But as you’re considering your options, consider this:

No one dies for some hazy “inner experience” of conversion and self-forgiveness. Certainly not eleven of his disciples, who saw everything, who heard our Lord cry out from the Cross, and were left cowering in fear in the upper room.

And absolutely no one was foolish enough to stand before a crowd of 1,000s, 50 days after the crucifixion like Peter did, to tell the people, “Don’t worry, the man we followed, he lives! And he lives, as a feeling in your heart.”

You’d have to be insane.

And you know what, come to think of it, maybe he was insane.

After all, he stood in the very same city that had just murdered our Lord, and preached that “this man God raised on the third day and granted that he be visible.” And that “he commissioned us to preach to the people, that he is the one appointed by God as judge of the living and the dead.”

That seems pretty crazy, right? And why would I believe just one guy?

Except, he was with ten other apostles, plus all the other disciples who saw him. And then there were the 500, who Paul tells us physically saw him after he rose.

Are we supposed to believe that all of them were either insane, or hallucinating, or both?

That doesn’t work. The math doesn’t math, as the kids say.

Science may not be able to comprehend it, but that’s ok. Science can’t comprehend a lot of things - like love, mercy or compassion, hope or faith. But it doesn’t make any of those things any less true, or any less real.

Peter stepped into a tomb where a body used to be. He remembered every detail. John saw it too. “He saw, and believed.”

These eleven men saw him later that evening. They saw the holes in his hands and his feet. Thomas placed his hand in his side, and felt his heart, still beating, lance wound and all.

If he hadn’t, he would’ve never cried out, “My Lord and my God.”

That’s the difference between an empty tomb, and a mere feeling that somehow, he lives, but in what way, no one can say.

I guess the only question for us is: Which do you believe?

I’m going to ask all of you that very question in just a minute, as we renew our baptismal promises. And I pray that this church shakes, like our prayer last night spoke of - that “this holy building would shake with joy, filled with the mighty voices of the peoples,” who together proclaim that Jesus Christ “rose from the dead on the third day.” That “Jesus Christ is LORD - to the glory of God the Father.”

I believe, along with billions of others through the centuries who believed, because those eleven men were willing to die for it.

They gave their lives because the only thing more incredible than seeing an empty tomb, is to see the man who was once buried in it.

That’s what they saw on Easter Sunday: a man with four nail holes and a pierced heart; a heart that can do nothing but love you, each of you, for all eternity.

But until that day comes, an empty tomb is enough for me.

The Gospel of John is full of peculiar details - details that only someone who was actually there could remember. We pass over most of them, probably not paying them much attention.

One such detail caught my eye. It says, “Jesus went out with his disciples across the Kidron valley to where there was a garden, into which he and his disciples entered.”

The detail? The garden.

Mankind was once brought into existence in a garden. This garden was meant to be our home forever. But our first parents failed - and so, we were exiled from it.

Christ, we could say, re-enters this garden to begin his Passion.

And it is from within that garden that, step by step, the new Adam undoes the mistakes of the old.

As Christ enters the ruined garden of this world, He encounters the same serpent that Adam first encountered. But this time, the task would prove more difficult.

The first time, the serpent was a trespasser - he had no power, other than to deceive. This time, he’s the ruler of the garden; it is under his power, having dominion over it.

But unlike Adam, who cowered at the thought of challenging the serpent, Christ didn’t shrink from the responsibility. He sweat blood at the prospect of what was to come, but as John said, he entered that Garden “knowing everything that was going to happen to him.” He was not caught “unawares” - he chose to come into the world for exactly this purpose.

After our Lord drew his last breath, they took him down from the cross. Then, they buried him in a tomb, just a short distance away.

Where, exactly? In a garden.

Just like the first Adam, God cast a deep sleep over his Son. And in three days, he will awaken. And when he does, like the old Adam, he will set his eyes once again on his bride, the new Eve: the Church.

Now, the serpent will try to stand in his way - after all, we once belonged to him.

But when Christ rose from the dead and saw us, he said the words that Adam once spoke: “This one, at last, is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh.”

And he will say to that serpent, “Depart from me, Satan, she is no longer yours. She has been washed clean with the water that came from my side. I will feed her with my body, and nourish her with my blood. Her dowry, I paid with my life. My wedding gift to her is my very spirit, which even now, rests within her.

She is no longer yours. She’s mine, and I am hers, forever.”

And all of it happened, in a garden.

Tonight, we begin the Sacred Triduum with the Mass of the Lord’s Supper. And on this evening above all, we remember the single greatest gift that God has ever given us - his very presence, in the Eucharist.

It would be nearly impossible to summarize the magnitude of this gift. But if we were to try, Paul’s words come to mind, as well as those which we hear today, and every time we celebrate the Eucharist:

“Do this, in memory of me.”

As men approach death, they often leave a will, a final testament. They bequeath to their loved ones an inheritance, possessions, but maybe more than that, they pass on the things in their life by which they will be remembered.

Our Lord was no different. The Gospel reminds us: “[he] knew that his hour had come to pass from this world to the Father.”

So, on the final night of his life, he left to his brothers an inheritance - the Eucharist.

It’s an inheritance of eternal value, because it is the very gift of Himself. It is His True Presence. Living bread, food for the journey. Divinity, in a single host. In the smallest fragment of that host, is contained that which is uncontainable. Eternal, infinite, perfect love, veiled in the appearances of bread and wine. Not symbolically, but truly, and substantially.

This would not be a gift given only to His Apostles. It would be a perpetual gift, one to be given, over and over again, to those who love Him.

The words we hear in English - “memory,” “remembrance,” they lose the original connotation, their original meaning. To us, those words are a “cognitive” act - like accessing a fond memory of the past. But for the Jewish people, it was always more: it was a re-presentation, and a participation in the original action, here and now. It’s as if the two actions are one act, even as they are spread across space and time.

In our first reading, we see this vividly, when it says about Passover, “this day shall be a memorial feast for you, which all your generations shall celebrate, with pilgrimage to the Lord, as a perpetual institution.”

Each time the Passover was celebrated, the entire people of God, past and present, were united; they were saved by the blood on the doorposts, and by the water of the Red Sea. They shared in the same meal as those who came before, and they looked forward with them to a future Passover.

Now, in this new and final Passover, He wanted everyone to participate, just as his people had participated in the first Passover.

So, to ensure that this gift would be handed on, that he would be present to his people just as he was present to his first disciples, he instituted another sacrament at the exact same time: He called men to himself and entrusted to them “the whole spiritual good of the Church” - Christ himself.

It was to these men, his Apostles, that the command was given. They, in turn, entrusted this power to other men, whom today, we call priests. Priests who have faithfully carried out this same exact command for almost 2,000 years. Priests whom He consecrated with the same words:

“Do this, in memory of me.”

The Eucharist is the soul of the Priesthood. The life of a priest is forever linked to that command. In everything he does, in everything that he is, he is called to perpetuate Christ’s Eucharistic presence. There is no greater work for a priest. Without it, the priesthood would be completely void of meaning.

For the priest, the Eucharist is everything. And if you knew only that about a priest, you’d know everything.

Everything else a priest does, is a means to that end.

Priests, of course, do many other things: they bring people to spiritual life through Baptism; they impart the gift of the Holy Spirit through Confirmation; they sanctify through the power of Confession; heal the sick by anointing them with oil. They protect and defend their people from evil, through their teaching and preaching.

But all of this is ultimately directed towards one thing: the power to speak God’s very presence into existence. So that when those in their care encounter Christ, they find salvation. And when they consume the Eucharist, they become united with God, as a foretaste of heaven.

Because the Eucharist is heaven - and our Lord entrusted to the priesthood, a mission: to bring heaven down to earth.

That is . . . an incredible gift. A power that is unspeakable. Who else but God could bring heaven to earth? And why would God entrust such a power to mere men?

After all, power is a dangerous word, especially when combined with the word “priest.” In just a few hours, abusive power wielded by corrupt, evil priests would take his own life. Misunderstood power had already taken one of his apostles, whose new master offered him an earthly power to lord over others, not a spiritual power meant for service and love.

So, before he would let them exercise this power, he had one final lesson to impart:

“He rose from supper and took off his outer garments. He took a towel and tied it around his waist. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet.”

God chose Holy Thursday, of all the days in his ministry, to teach his disciples that if the Master washed feet, his servants should as well. That if the Master was willing to give his life, the servants should be as well.

That the hands that will one day call forth his presence, the hands that will touch God himself, the hands that greet and that bless; that hold the sick and dying; the hands he has consecrated with sacred chrism to bring heaven down to earth:

Those same hands must also be hands that wash feet.

I think that on Palm Sunday and Good Friday, when we read the accounts of Jesus’ passion and death, it might be the only time when a homily can take something away.

How do you preach anything after a story like that? What could possibly be added?

I think the Church feels the same way. The rubrics for today state:

“After the narrative of the Passion, a brief homily should take place, if appropriate. A period of silence may also be observed.”

So, I only want to meditate on one thing - really, one word: Passion.

Passion is a word with two meanings - one is what we mean when we say someone in love is “passionate.” Or in another word, desire. The other is what we mean by suffering and pain.

It’s a word worth meditating on. Because today, pain, passion, and desire are found inextricably linked together by another word: love.

Love is probably the only thing that unifies these meanings. Love has, contained within itself, the limit case for passion. To fall in love is to desire someone so profoundly that you would be willing to suffer anything for their sake.

The Lord fell in love with you. So deeply was - is - his desire for you, that he was willing to disregard his equality with God, take the form of a slave, and be nailed to a cross.

His desire for you - his passion for you - meant that he was willing to suffer anything, even death.

And all of it - for you.

And so, in silence, let’s reflect on the Lord’s Passion. And let us ask the Lord to stir within us that same Passion he has for each of us.

In a way, Lent is a season where the Church takes things away from us.

First, we took away food - fasting from meat on Fridays, abstaining from food entirely on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.

Then, we took music from you: If you’ve noticed, the music selection has been sparser, no preludes. In fact, the Missal - that big book I use - states that during Lent, musical accompaniment should be minimal, only enough to support those who sing.

We’ve taken beauty from you: There are no flowers permitted in the Church during Lent.

And now, we’ve taken away the crucifix and statues. They’ve all veiled.

The fifth Sunday of Lent has been known for centuries as “Passiontide.” The rubrics state:

“In the Dioceses of the United States, the practice of covering crosses and images throughout the church from this Sunday may be observed. Crosses remain covered until the end of the Celebration of the Lord’s Passion on Good Friday, but images remain covered until the beginning of the Easter Vigil.”

If you look around, that’s exactly what has happened. Even the processional Crucifix has a cover. All the statues are the same.

Why?

Because Lent is a time for us to follow the Lord. And just as the Lord had everything stripped from him during the last weeks of his life, we allow things to be taken from us.

The life of a Christian must mean following his example. The Church has known this for centuries - that’s the entire point of Lent.

At the same time, this Sunday is the last of a three-week series of readings known as “the Scrutinies.” The readings in particular are focused on teaching our catechumens - those entering the church at Easter - about the “mysteries of the faith.” In particular, the three Gospel readings have a particular focus on Baptism:

• In the story of the Woman at the Well, we learn that baptism is the gift of “living water,” that wells up to eternal life

• In the story of the Man Born Blind, we learn that through Baptism, the Lord engages in a re-creation, and that through Baptism, our blindness is replaced with “Light;” we become “children of light.”

And finally, in this last week, we learn something else about Baptism: That Baptism, while it is water and light, is also something seemingly contrary to those things:

That baptism is also death.

In order to be baptized into Christ’s life, we must be baptized into all of it, including his death. Paul, in the book of Romans, reminds us of this. He says:

“Are you unaware that we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were indeed buried with him through baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might live in newness of life.”

It’s from this that Paul, in our second reading, can make such an astonishing claim:

“if the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, the one who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also, through his Spirit dwelling in you.”

But in order to receive this, we must allow the Lord to take something more from us, more than just the food, music, or the statues that surround us. It’s something that many of us probably hold onto in so many different ways: our former lives.

And to do so, we must follow the example of Lazarus: we must go all the way to the tomb.

Like him, we must be veiled with our own burial cloths. Lowered into the water, which was an ancient symbol of death, chaos, and destruction. Submerged into its darkness. The darkness that forces the psalm to declare, “Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD; LORD, hear my voice!”

For our catechumens, as for us, the lesson imparted by these three Gospels is simple: without Christ, we are left in a spiritual drought, blind to the reality of God, and spiritually dead.

But with baptism, everything changes.

When we are submerged into life-giving water, we suffer loss, it’s true - the loss of a life that was our own. As Thomas said, “let us also go to die with him.” But when we rise from it, we are given something in return: eternal life.

We are transformed into springs of life-giving water, given spiritual sight to see more clearly the Light which is the Light of the World. And having shared in Christ’s death, he calls us forth from the grave to share in his life, just as he called Lazarus. And just as Ezekiel foretold in the first reading.

He strips the burial bands that once veiled our true natures, and we are set free.

If Lent is a season of “taking away,” it’s only because it is preparing us to receive something new, something that, without things being taken away from us first, we would be unable to receive.

Having learned the lessons of these past three weeks, we are now prepared to enter into the greatest and most Holy of Weeks. Next week, on Palm Sunday, we will celebrate our Lord’s entry into Jerusalem. We will speak the words of the crowd: “Hosanna to the Son of David.” But we will also speak other words:

“Crucify him.”

On Holy Thursday, we will celebrate the institution of the Eucharist and the Priesthood. We will wash feet and participate in the One True Sacrifice of the Eucharist.

On Good Friday, we will “behold the wood of the Cross, on which hung the salvation of the world.”

And finally, everything culminates at the Easter Vigil, we will join as one community, around a fire. The “Light of Christ” will fill this Church, and we will baptize our brothers and sisters, who will wake up on Easter Sunday as the newest Christians of our parish family.

The veils will be torn away. We will fill this space with the light of Christ. Flowers and music will return. And those who were once dead to sin will have risen to new life in Christ.

How is all of this possible? We heard it, in the Gospel today:

“I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.”

“Do you believe this?” He asks us.

Might we all reply in the words of Martha: “Yes, Lord. I have come to believe: you are the Christ, the Son of God.”

As we continue with Lent, we have arrived at the second week of a three-week period known as “the Scrutinies,” for those preparing to enter the Church. In these three weeks, the Gospel readings are centered on the mysteries of faith, which are the sacraments they will receive.

• Last week, we read in the “Woman at the Well” that he is “living water,”

• Next week, through the story of Lazarus, we will see him as “the resurrection and life.”

This week, through the story of the “Man Born Blind,” Christ is revealed to us as “light.”

But to understand this story, we need some context from the Gospel of John. John’s gospel has a particular focus on Jesus’s divinity, and it frames the entire world - and salvation - in the terms of “darkness” and “light.”

Go back to the very beginning of John, and you’ll “see” it:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. What came to be through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race; the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

The story of the man born blind alludes to this. And it’s chosen precisely so that, whether we are catechumens or already Catholic, we might see him in us. That, at some point in our lives, we too were once the man in our Gospel today.

All of us “were once in darkness,” as Paul says. Whether it was “pre” or “post” baptism, we took part “in the fruitless works of darkness.” Afraid of the light, because “everything exposed by the light becomes visible.”

We could remain in the darkness, but Paul tells us, “everything that becomes visible is light.” Darkness is for those who remain spiritually dead. Christ came into the world to rouse us from the dead, that he might give us his light.

While the disciples are focused on what he did to “deserve” his blindness, they miss entirely. The man born blind is a type, an analogy. His blindness represents the state of the soul without Christ: darkness.

Christ begins the work he was sent to do in a rather strange way: “he spat on the ground and made clay with the saliva, and smeared the clay on his eyes, and said to him, ‘Go wash in the Pool of Siloam.’”

Irenaeus, one of the earliest Church Fathers, saw in this act an echo of Genesis: the same God who fashioned man from the clay of the earth now re-fashions man with his own hands.

The man then bathes in the water, and once he does so, he becomes a new creation in Christ.

John very subtly alludes to this. He writes:

“His neighbors and those who had seen him earlier as a beggar said, ‘Isn’t this the one who used to sit and beg?’ Some said, ‘It is,’ but others said, ‘No, he just looks like him.’ He said, ‘I am.’”

Only Jesus and the man born blind say those words in the Gospel of John: “I AM.” It’s the divine name - the name they substitute with “Lord” throughout the Old Testament. Having been reborn, John identifies him in the same way that Christ identifies himself. Why? Because Christ lives within him now.

But notice something else - to which question is blind man responding? Is he the “one who used to sit and beg?” Or is simply someone else, that happens to look like him?

The answer, for him, as it is for all of us, is . . . both.

We were once those held captive by sin, left blind in spiritual darkness to “sit and beg.” But we are also something more. By the water poured on us at our baptism, we have been transfigured. “We ARE” children of God. We are light in the Lord, living as children of light.

We were once blind, but now, we see.

The people in our lives may not understand this transformation, much as it was for the man in the Gospel.

That’s because, like Samuel in the first reading, they judge by appearances, spiritually blind to what God accomplished right in front of them. “Not as man sees does God see; man sees the appearance, but the Lord looks into the heart.”

His parents, afraid for their own sakes, abandoned him. His own nation and people cast him out. But for him, it no longer mattered.

No matter how dark the valley might have been in that moment, just like the psalm, the Lord became his shepherd. His sight restored, he was able to follow the Lord, because:

• This shepherd “led him to restful waters” - a symbol of Baptism.

• He “spread a table before him,” - a symbol of the Eucharist.

• And he “anointed his head with oil,” - a symbol of Confirmation.

These are the sacraments of Christian initiation:

• Water that cleanses.

• Food that nourishes.

• And oil that seals us as one of his own.

Only one question remains: do we recognize his voice as he calls us?

The man in the Gospel never actually saw the Lord before he was healed - he could only hear his voice. Which means, he still had to make an act of faith: that the one whom he heard with his ears was the same man he now beheld with his eyes.

We, too, have heard his voice, through sacred scripture - but we haven’t seen him, not physically. But that doesn’t mean we’re blind. God, through these sacraments, gives us the ability to see with the eyes of the soul. With the eyes of faith.

It’s precisely how we see past the appearances of bread and wine and see the truth - his Body and Blood.

When we “see” the same truth as the man born blind, might we then follow his example. Once seen, he said:

“I do believe, Lord.”

And once he believed, he worshiped.

As we enter into the third Sunday of Lent, we begin a three-week period known as “the Scrutinies” for those preparing to enter the Church. The Gospels in particular are chosen to guide them into a more profound understanding of the mysteries they are about to enter.

So, what are they called, precisely, to learn?

The “Order of Christian Initiation for Adults,” OCIA for short, states that we are “to teach the elect gradually about that mystery of sin and to fill their spirit with the sense of Christ the Redeemer.”

Over the next three weeks, we are encouraged to see three specific attributes of “Christ the Redeemer:” that he is “living water,” “light,” and “the resurrection and life.”

These “attributes” line up with the Gospels: “Living water” corresponds to the Woman at the Well; “light” with the Man born Blind, and “resurrection and life” with the raising of Lazarus.

Three weeks. Three Gospels. Three opportunities to awaken in those who are entering the church and in ourselves a deeper awareness and an understanding of who God truly is.

This week, our focus is on the Woman at the Well. Outside of the Passion readings on Palm Sunday and Good Friday, and an incredibly long reading of the story of Susanna during a weekday mass, it is likely the longest reading that we will hear in Mass. Which points to its importance - so often, the Church will “crop” specific readings, shortening them. But not this one.

First, notice the time of day - “the sixth hour.” That’s noon. The woman has come to the well at the heat of the day - thirsty.

But she is not the only one.

Our Lord is already at the well, with a different sort of thirst. The same Lord, who will speak the words “I thirst” from the Cross, meets her at the same time of day as his crucifixion - noon.

Both thirst. And each is the answer to the other’s thirst.

The woman thirsts for “living water” - water that will satisfy her completely, and eternally. But our Lord’s thirst is for the woman. He craves her love, her acceptance of the gift which he would freely give to her, if she would but surrender.

But she refuses, at first. Even when she is enticed by the prospect of “living water,” she holds something back - namely, her situation. Our Lord calls her gently to reveal that which separates him from her with the simplest of questions. “Go, call your husband and come back.”

She answers him with a truth and a lie. Her words were true: “I do not have a husband.” But the lie was the omission: “You have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband.”

That’s why she’s at the well, in the heat of the day, at noon. A woman married five times, and living with a sixth, is not a woman to keep company with, in the opinion of most. Undesired, and unloved, by all.

Except Jesus.

It’s fitting that it was this question, about marriage, that was asked. In the Old Testament, what followed a meeting at a well was a marriage. Isaac’s wife. Jacob’s wife. Moses’s wife.

The state of the woman was also reflective of the state of her people. When the Samaritans were sent into exile, they were divided between five foreign nations, each with their own god. Eventually, Samaritans returned to worshipping the God of Israel, but they never truly gave themselves over to him.

Rather, they chose to worship him only on their own terms - their own temple, their own priests, their own form of worship - but not the worship that the original covenant required.

But now the God whom she presumed to worship was standing before her. Her divine bridegroom had come to her, at a well, just like her ancestors.

And he came to reveal that in the days to come, not just the Samaritans, but all people, even Gentiles, would worship the living God “in spirit and in truth,” no longer limited to a temple, or a mountain, in Jerusalem.

Once the woman found what she thirsted for, “the love of God having been poured, like living water, into her heart,” she left her jug at the well - it was no longer necessary. She went to share the news, even with the people who hated her, because what she received was so transformative that she could not possibly keep it to herself.

“Living water” is like that - it’s never stagnant; it always flows outward.

And Christ, having won her heart, was no longer in need of a drink, nor the food that the apostles had brought to him. “He had food to eat of which they did not know.”

My brothers and sisters: this woman’s story is our own.

We have a well in this Church - a font that will be used after Mass to baptize the newest members of our Church with living water.

Our divine bridegroom meets us here, at this altar. He prepares us, just as he prepared her, by speaking the words of Scripture, to prepare the fields of our hearts to receive his Word.

We, like the woman, have been pulled away by different Gods at times - power, wealth, pleasure, fame, and self-interest. And at times, we worship the living God, but when our hearts find comfort in other lovers, we don’t truly belong to him.

Like the Samaritans, some of us may have found the Lord in other church communities or have chosen to worship him on our own terms.

But our God is a jealous God. He does not wish to share us - he wishes to possess us entirely, and for us to possess him, entirely, exclusively, and completely.

Whether we are catechumens, candidates, or Catholics, we have all found our way to this well because, having already drunk deeply from all the other options, we still thirsted for something more.

For 2,000 years, he’s returned each day to meet us at the well of the Church. He arrives at each and every Mass with an insatiable thirst.

A divine desire for a human heart. Union, through communion.

Maybe Lent is a perfect opportunity to ask: Do we recognize the thirst that lives within each of us?

The woman at the well is the model disciple. She teaches all of us who we once were, and who are called to be. She reminds us not to settle for water that only satisfies for a time - but to ask for “living water, which wells up to eternal life.”

And just as our Lord thirsted for the woman he encountered that day, he thirsts also, for you.

As we have arrived at the second Sunday of Lent, some of us might be feeling those “hardships for the Gospel” that our second reading speaks of. We certainly know that the Lord “calls us to a holy life,” but we also know that Lent can start to feel restrictive and frustrating.

However, Paul reminds us: we’ve been promised “the strength that comes from God.”

Salvation history understands. This is why the Church offers us a bit of encouragement through the story of Abraham.

Abraham, like us, is invited to embark on a journey:

“Go forth from the land of your kinsfolk and from your father’s house to a land that I will show you.”

Very little information is given - how far might he travel? What might he encounter along the way? The path would seem difficult at best when first starting out. But what made such difficulty bearable was the promise:

“I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you. All the communities of the earth shall find blessing in you.”

Abraham was presented with a choice: he could remain in the comfort of his home, living whatever time he had remaining in relative peace and security, or he could follow the Lord.

In that moment, he stepped out in the faith that is so concisely captured in our psalm today: “Lord, let your mercy be on us, as we place our trust in you.”

Trust is, in a very real way, another word for faith.

Faith, as the letter to Hebrews tells us, “is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

Abraham could not ‘know,’ with intellectual certainty, that what God promised would be fulfilled. The promises weren’t exactly tangible, nor were they seen with clarity.

And how could they? How could an 80-year-old man have surety that “his name would be great,” or that his descendants would be “as numerous as the stars in the sky?”

But he was convicted that what the Lord said would be fulfilled. And so, he set out to a land that was not his own, into a future full of uncertainty, but with faith - trust - in the Lord.

In the same way, our catechumens and those entering into full communion with the Church this Easter are doing the same thing.

Their faith is a reminder for all of us: no one really comes “to” the faith unless they first step out “in” faith.

Often times though, faith remains a noun - it never becomes a verb. If the “gift” of faith we received at our baptism never converts into an “act” of faith, it begins to fade. And when the moment arrives to “entrust” ourselves, we falter.

If faith remains an abstract concept, it simply withers on the vine.

Our catechumens and candidates have officially taken that first step this Lenten season. Having passed through the temptations of the desert that we read about last week, what we might call “temptations to faith,” 1,096 people throughout our Archdiocese committed themselves to set out on the journey of faith.

1,096. That’s the highest number in more than 15 years.

But, we might ask: what is our goal on this journey? Where are we headed? And where is “He” leading us?

Every second Sunday of Lent, we are reminded - because the Church knows that our catechumens and candidates, and maybe most especially those of us who have already been blessed with this faith, we need reminding.

And it is precisely in the Transfiguration that we receive a glimpse into the plan of God, and a glimpse of our futures.

Transfiguration might as well be the very “theme” of the entire Lenten season.

We are taken up the mountain along with Peter, James, and John, and are permitted to see our Lord as he truly is. The veil that masked his divinity is removed for us - and for the first time, we see with absolute clarity, who the Son truly is, and who we are called to be:

“For we will be like him, and we shall see him as he is.”

Lent is a process of “transfiguration” for all of us. It is the “end” for which we all long. But to get there, we must first follow the Lord back down the mountain. We aren’t permitted, as Peter wished, to remain.

That’s why it’s not a mistake that this Transfiguration takes place just before he “set his face towards Jerusalem.” It is at this point that Jesus begins to speak openly of his coming execution.

The Lord knows that there is nothing “logical” about “deicide.” No “intellectual concept” can capture the rationale for why God would die for us. It’s beyond the realm of simple rational logic, because love isn’t “logical” in that sense. Love is supra-natural - it doesn’t contradict reason, but it cannot be explained by it either.

The Lord, all-powerful and all-knowing, wasn’t somehow “limited” in how he might have saved us. But it was by choosing to give his life on the Cross that he could most adequately express that while he is all-powerful and all-knowing, he is also “love itself.”

The transfiguration demonstrated his power and his divinity - so that when the time came for the cross, he might demonstrate to the world that power and knowledge are nothing, if there is no love.

Love then, is definitional to divinity.

So as we step out in faith this Lent, maybe we should ask ourselves: are we listening to God's invitation to follow him?

Maybe what he’s asking is difficult, or seemingly impossible. If so, he offers you, in this and in every Mass, “food for the journey.” We never journey alone - he always walks beside us. And the Father speaks to us in the same way he spoke to the Apostles.

They, too, were afraid, just as Abraham must have been. And though they didn’t yet understand everything that would take place, like Abraham, they “placed their trust” in the words they heard from the Father:

“This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.”

As we enter into Lent, the Church asks us from the very first week to confront the very source of our separation from God.

Sin.

Sin, we might say, is a difficult word. “Sin” implies fault. Error. Judgment. Punishment. None of us wants to be at fault or in error. No One wants to be judged or punished for their actions.

So instead, we soften the language. We replace “sin” with “accident,” “mistake,” or “ignorance.” Anything to avoid fault or punishment.

We couldn’t see that play out more perfectly than in our first reading. In Genesis, God creates within his creation a paradise. Everything is provided, and only one command given. He then leaves our first parents to care for the paradise that he created for them.

But then comes the serpent. And his challenge begins in the form of a question:

“Did God really tell you not to eat from any of the trees in the garden?”

I wonder if we’ve ever asked, “why that question?” The serpent knew there was only one forbidden tree — but by asking it, he achieved something profound: he ensured that what followed could never be called an accident or a mistake. No ignorance could possibly be claimed.

The woman’s reply would be the very thing that sealed their fate:

“We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; it is only about the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden that God said, ‘You shall not eat it or even touch it, lest you die.’”

Her reply tells us something important - that while the command was given to Adam, he gave the command in its entirety to Eve. Which means, both knew the law of the Lord, free from ignorance or misunderstanding.

It’s only after clarifying their understanding that the devil would spring the temptation. And fundamentally, it was a temptation centered on “trust.”

“You certainly will not die! No, God knows well that the moment you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods who know what is good and what is evil.”

It was this idea - “you can’t trust God,” that was the first domino. Everything that happened after happened because Adam and Eve now saw the situation through the lens of doubt.

Now, they looked at the tree differently - good for food, pleasing, attractive. Why would God keep it from us? Suddenly, the world wasn’t enough . . they just wanted . . . more.

“So she took some of its fruit and ate it; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized that they were naked.”

They couldn’t use words like “accident,” or “mistake,” to justify their actions. Adam simply made up an excuse:

“She did it.”

It was a poor excuse. Why? Because “he was with her;” he heard all of it. And further, he was responsible for the garden, and for all within it, including Eve. That’s why fundamentally, it’s Adam’s sin.

The woman, seeing that the excuse didn’t work, did the only rational thing left. She “confessed.” She might as well have repeated the psalm: “be merciful O Lord, for we have sinned.”

Adam and Eve could’ve given their children everything; instead, they gave them ‘doubt.’ And it has infected us ever since. Doubt produces self-reliance, and self-reliance hardens into a stubborn refusal to trust.

And it all started with a simple question: “Did God really say?”

That might as well be the root of every sin we encounter.

And once the sin is committed, it ultimately leaves us feeling empty, alone, wounded, or afraid. And it’s only then, in our nakedness, that we realize: God wasn’t holding something back - he was protecting us from something he knew would only bring us pain, misery, and death.

But rather than remaining ‘above it all,’ our Lord came and joined himself to the same pain, misery, and death that we experience, to teach us how to trust.

• Rather than satisfy the desires of the flesh, turning stones into bread, he chose to trust the Lord’s timing: “One does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.”

• Rather than the attention that might come with fame and status, he chose to trust in his father’s providence, not to challenge it: “You shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test.”

• And rather than the pride of life that can only be achieved by worshiping the ruler of this world, he chose to trust in the will of his Father: “The Lord, your God, shall you worship and him alone shall you serve.”

Instead of grasping for something “more,” like Adam did, our Lord accepted death - death on a cross.

He could only do so because he trusted his Father, that “just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so, through the obedience of the one, the many would be made righteous.”

The challenge for us, this Lent, is simple: when the temptations come, will we choose doubt, or trust? Will we follow Adam, or will we follow Christ?

Adam was tempted in the perfection of the garden, where all was provided. His doubt led him into the desert of a barren world, where he died.

Our Lord was tempted in the desert of a broken world, where there existed nothing but doubt. But his trust in the Father, even from the Cross, re-opened for us the garden of Paradise.

At the end of the day, sin will hold us to account - excuses evaporate when we stand before the throne of God.

But it’s a completely different story when the man who rose from the dead stands beside us, who pleads on our behalf, because we chose, rather than make excuses, to place our trust in the psalm: “be merciful O Lord, for we have sinned.”

What does it really mean to be, as Paul says, “Ambassadors of Christ?”

Maybe it’s fitting that we ask this question today. It’s probably this day above all when our allegiance to Christ becomes readily visible. The mark of our baptism - our identity as Christians - becomes visible in the form of ashes.

But is that what it really means, to be an “ambassador of Christ?” Is it just about the exterior?

As I was thinking about this, I guess you could say an old “folk tale” came to mind from my time at seminary. Not sure how much of this is true or exaggerated. I heard it from a priest, who heard it from a priest, as folk tales go. But I think it can help us to understand what sort of ambassador we are called to be.

Once upon a time, there was a seminarian who would always do extravagant penances every Lent. And maybe most importantly, he made sure to let everyone know about them - harsh fasts with no food, so many hours in prayer. Give up meat entirely. Bread and water only.

This went on for the first few years. But one year, his spiritual director stopped him and said, “How about for this Lent, your penance will be whatever I tell you to do. What do you say to that?”

He readily agreed, thinking his spiritual director would give him something truly penitential.

So Lent begins, and as he sat down to eat with his friends, his spiritual director came to his table and said to him, “Give me your plate.” The spiritual director replaced his meager meal, with . . . a Big Mac, extra large fries, and a huge milkshake. He told him, “eat this,” and walked away.

Now, the guy’s a bit confused. There he was, in front of his friends, who were all giving something up, soda, dessert, something - and there he was eating a Big Mac, his friends, scoffing at him.

The next day the seminarian came to the chapel early to pray. His spiritual director was waiting for him. “Go back to your room to pray.”

Friends started asking him, “We haven’t seen you in chapel. We thought you were going to spend extra time in prayer this Lent?”

The next evening, he was in the seminary lounge. While many had given up beer and snacks, the spiritual director gave him a large, frothy mug of ice-cold beer.

Day after day, for the next two weeks, the spiritual director did the same thing - purposefully interrupting any sort of penance he tried to do.

Quickly, he became a bit of a laughingstock. His friends, playfully egging him on: “Pretty tough Lent, right, Big Mac?” Rolling their eyes at him.

The seminarian, furious, scheduled a meeting with the spiritual director. And as he sat down, his director, smiling, asked him, “How’s Lent going?”

He finally exploded. He told his spiritual director that he was angry and embarrassed, that he had great plans for Lent, and that he was ruining them. His reputation was trashed, people thought less of him.

The spiritual director sat and listened patiently, nodding his head and smiling. After the seminarian finished, the spiritual director slid a Snickers bar over to him and told him, “Eat this, while I explain.”

That’s a genius move by the way - you can’t argue when you have a Snickers in your mouth.

Then, the spiritual director calmly pointed to a Bible, “Matthew, chapter six.” So the seminarian picked up the Bible in front of him and began to read to himself:

“Take care not to perform righteous deeds in order that people may see them . . . When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, who love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on street corners so that others may see them . . . When you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites.”

He set the Bible down, and immediately, he understood: The spiritual director hardly had to say it: the seminarian wasn’t being an “ambassador for Christ.” He was being an ambassador for himself.

All of these acts, the fasting and penances - they weren’t for God. The seminarian wanted to look good, to show everyone just how holy he was. His fasting was done to be seen - not for “the Father, who is hidden, who sees what is hidden”

What that spiritual director did for him, without him even realizing it, was a fast. But it wasn’t a fast from food, or drink. It was a fast from pride.

Christ was many things, but prideful, wasn’t one of them. And that tells us something about the type of ambassador Christ wants in this world. He wants us to be those ambassadors who go about our work with humility.

The very same humility that led Christ, “though he was in the form of God, to not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.”

Before all else, humility is the true mark of an ambassador of Christ.

Yes, we are called, as it says in our first reading, “to return [to the Lord] with our whole hearts, with fasting, and weeping, and mourning.” We are asked to do something for Lent. And some aspects, like the ashes, are public. But notice the very next line - “Rend your hearts, not your garments.”

The heart is that hidden part of ourselves - it’s the place where only God can see.

I’m sure many of you are choosing things to give up, foods to fast from, prayers to say, and alms to give. All good things. But remember the purpose for which we give those things up.

Jesus, as always, is our model - how did he do it? He fasted alone, in the desert, for 40 days. How many times might we share that selfie today, with ashes on our foreheads? What’s the motivation behind it? Love of God? Or love of self?

So this year, I’d ask you to try something new. Offer to the Lord one penance - it can be anything - but tell no one about it. Do it in secret, for all of Lent.

Because one day, you might discover that it was that one penance alone, that the Lord treasured above all others, simply because you gave it to him . . . and to him alone.

“And your Father who sees in secret will repay you.”

In our Gospel today, our Lord continues his “Sermon on the Mount,” moving into a particular section on “the law.”

Generally speaking, the word “law” raises eyebrows. We all know that a rightly ordered law is good. But we also know that laws have a tendency to suffocate. To frustrate. Somewhere deep down, with every law imposed, even a good one, it has a feeling of somehow also imposing a limitation on some aspect of human freedom.

And that’s because we tend to have a warped view of what, exactly, human freedom is.

We tend to define freedom as “the license to do as one pleases.” Of course, if taken literally, this definition of freedom ends in anarchy. Society simply wouldn’t survive.

So, laws were devised over time, knowingly limiting this problematic definition of freedom even while holding on to the definition, but in such a way that it affected the least amount of people possible, while providing for the most amount of freedom.

Ancient Israel was no different. 500 years in slavery, they yearned for freedom. Yet, they were wholly unready for the freedom that came to them during the Exodus. They were like children, experiencing freedom for the first time - the freedom to do as they pleased.

That’s why even today, we give children rules, laws, instructions. We know that children are unable to account for the fact that their actions have consequences, sometimes severe ones, that persist far beyond the particular act. Hindsight and foreknowledge are what adults possess, at least most of the time - which is why parents make the laws, not children. And by doing so, we protect them from themselves.

But ideally, as a child grows into adulthood, they begin seeing the “bigger picture.” That the laws and the rules they so ardently rebelled against were not, in fact, simply arbitrary limitations on their freedom.

They come to understand that the rules were meant to orient them away from what might harm them and towards what was truly good for them.

It’s through this process that they discover the true definition of freedom - “the capacity to choose the good,” because “the good” is what ultimately leads to human flourishing. A freedom to do as one pleases, ignorant or even contrary to the good, on the other hand, only leads to destruction and heartbreak.

The problem with Israel, was that they never grew up - their growth was “stunted,” and in need of maturing.

And it is this that our Lord seeks to remedy in our Gospel today.

Notice, he begins first by affirming the law:

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the law, until all things have taken place.”

This is evident in our first reading: “If you choose you can keep the commandments, they will save you. If you trust in God, you too shall live.” Even the responsorial psalm today echoes this: “Blessed are they who follow the law of the Lord!”

You might’ve missed it - the keeping of the commandments - the law - was actually a means to an end - salvation. Unfortunately, the scribes and the Pharisees had made “the law” the end for which they acted. Even their sacrificial system was bound up in myriad points of the law.

But that’s not the point of the law!

The point was to lead them into true, authentic, human flourishing. A flourishing which leads towards salvation. By reducing faith to law, they had “stunted” their own spiritual growth!

That’s why he follows this up with, “I tell you, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Simply following the law, and nothing more, was adolescent; it was the bare minimum, nothing more.

It’s then that the Lord, through a series of comparisons, begins to demonstrate what the law was ordered towards. He starts with “You have heard that it was said...” then moves towards, “but I say to you.” We should hear in that, “This is the law” - but, “This is what the law was actually ordered towards.”

“You have heard that it was said to your ancestors, You shall not kill; and whoever kills will be liable to judgment. But I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment.”

God establishes a law - don’t kill. But Jesus goes further: murder is simply the fruit of a heart filled with anger and revenge. True freedom consists in letting go, because it frees you from the chains of anger, rather than the false freedom of acting solely on emotion, however you may please.

“You have heard that it was said, You shall not commit adultery. But I say to you, everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”

Those who are slaves to lust are not truly “free” - they are bound by their passions, unable to control their desires. It’s precisely such a state that leads to adultery. But the person who is in control of their passions, who has control over their body, that person is truly free to love, rather than to lust after another.

Lust leads to adultery, adultery to divorce; anger leads to murder. An endless cycle of passion. But who’s really in control?

That doesn’t sound like freedom. It sounds like slavery.

The Sermon on the Mount is Jesus bringing us to spiritual maturity about the nature of sin. Sin always disguises itself as a type of freedom, a freedom that ultimately leads us to a prison of our own making, a slave to our most base desires.

That’s precisely why the Church sometimes has to say, “No.” It’s not because she enjoys it, or wants to be a killjoy, the big bad bully - but precisely because the “no” is meant to redirect us towards a deeper, more satisfying “yes.” All she wants to do is what any parent does for their children - to protect them from the heartbreak that comes with simply living life imprisoned by a false freedom, one without any reference to what is actually “good” for someone.

Our Lord reveals, at least in part, those passions which seek to rule over us, which are ultimately the cause of sin, whether they be murder, adultery, or anything else.

The heart will either be captivated with a freedom to do as one pleases, or drawn towards a freedom to do that which is truly good. And maybe there is a bit of irony in the fact that yes, we are “free” to choose, the one, or the other.

But the heart . . . it can only serve one master.

I don’t know about any of you, but there aren’t a whole lot of things better than a perfectly cooked steak.

You have to do a lot, though, to make it perfect. You have to pick the right cut of meat; you have to hit the right temperature. God knows I love my mother [I don’t think she knows this substack exists yet, so I’m safe for now!], but the only steak I knew until I left for the Army was “well done,” with a gallon of A1 steak sauce.

Which is why I mostly hated them.

But to truly make an excellent steak, at least in my opinion, it comes down to preparation. And the best possible preparation is salt.

The process itself is called a dry brine. It’s incredibly simple. You take a steak, and you season it with salt. Then, you place it in the fridge and wait.

The salt begins working immediately. It draws moisture from the steak to the surface. As water accumulates, the salt dissolves into it, which is then reabsorbed back into the steak. The longer you allow it to rest, the deeper the salt penetrates. It tenderizes the steak and intensifies the flavor.

If you do it all right, what you end up with is a perfect steak, medium-rare, worthy of any steakhouse, even Jeff Ruby.

Maybe some of you already knew all of that - and if you’re cooking steaks, I would hope so, at any rate.

But what you may not have known is that what a “dry brine” is to a steak, “Christianity” is to a culture.

We Catholics are the “secret ingredient,” if you will. We are absorbed into every nook and cranny of society. Whether it’s politics, the arts, science, universities, trade work, or social groups, we are called to shape and influence every sphere of culture and society.

And by doing so, we begin to “season” the culture from within - not through threat or force, but by the light that radiates from our faith, wherever we might go.

Just as salt draws water out of the steak, so our way of life is meant to attract others, so that we can share the “salt” of the Gospel with a tasteless world.

The longer we are in a place, the greater the effect. There’s a reason why when we use the term “western civilization,” it is synonymous with “Judeo-Christian” values. Churches and Cathedrals mark the landscape, Catholic hospitals, universities, and schools attract generation after generation.

If one needed any more proof of this, simply look here, the west side of Cincinnati, a place where Catholicism has been for hundreds of years. Steeple after steeple, with people who identify themselves by their parish and their high school.

We are truly the salt of the earth.

But the thing is, in order for salt to do its job, it must be added to whatever it’s called to transform. Salt that sits on the counter doesn’t season much of anything. It is meant to be put to use.

Worse, if salt is left out for too long, it absorbs moisture and the impurities that surround it. It becomes either flavorless, rancid, or insipid.

Salt will either season the world, or the world will spoil the salt.

We see this effect in our world as well. And it does us no good to ignore it.

At some point in our past, we chose to place the salt back on the shelf. As a result, the numbers of practicing Catholics have fallen precipitously, most especially in Europe, but here as well.

“Beacons of Light” would not be a necessity if we had continued to be the “salt of the earth” in our local Archdiocese - instead, we allowed the salt to sit out in the open.

And as salt does when not put to use, it absorbed and became integrated into the tasteless and insipid values of the world.

It resulted in the absolute devastation of a worldwide sex abuse scandal - where priests, bishops, even a cardinal, failed to “salt” the world with purity and chastity, but rather absorbed the promiscuity that surrounded them. They compromised their integrity, ruined their witness, destroyed victims, and their effects have reverberated across every level of the Church.

We still suffer the effects, and the shame of it, today.

Liturgies were transformed into performances, and people expected entertainment rather than true worship. All because we absorbed the idea of consumerism - “the customer is always right.” Gimmicks, rock bands, props, whatever might draw a crowd.

We as Catholics aren’t the only ones dealing with this temptation. A local church literally punted a bible through a field goal post for their Super Bowl service - we might find that easy to mock, but be careful - that’s what happens when “worship” becomes “whatever people want it to be.”

It’s why families attend schools but not their parishes, sports instead of mass, and why our kids leave the Church and don’t come back later in life. Why my heart breaks when grandmothers ask me if they can do a “bathtub baptism,” when their grown children refuse to have their grandchildren baptized.

And maybe worst of all, it affected us, as priests, which, if we are being honest, is where everything I just spoke about originated.

We forgot somewhere along the way that our calling was not to be an entertainer; not a “pop psychologist,” who tells everyone what they want to hear; not a “yes” man, who gives you everything that you want.

Our calling was to be a father.

A father tells you what you need to hear because he loves you, and because it’s what you deserve.

Which means fathers sometimes have to say, “No.”

So if you’re looking for someone to blame, someone to condemn, scream at, or demand accountability: I’m the one you want. I’m the priest - I’m responsible.

That’s why whenever a priest is moved to a new assignment, he can relate to the words of Paul today. We know at some point, we’re going to have to tell you hard truths. It always comes with some sense of “weakness and fear and much trembling.”

But we also know that the “demonstration of Spirit” that Paul speaks of is powerful. That it’s not built “on human wisdom,” but is the very “power of God.”

Maybe that’s why I can trust you to hear all of this, as hard as some of it is, because that “power of God” rests in each of you, as well. That it can be a “demonstration of spirit” that transforms not just ourselves but our parish, our community, and the world.

Because brothers and sisters - you were meant for this. You’re meant to be the salt that seasons the world. The lamp that lights the way for those in darkness. The “dry brine” that slowly, but assuredly, changes hearts, and that brings the “savor” of Christ into a tasteless world.

That very same “savor” that you will experience in just a moment, in all its reality and power - body, blood, soul, and divinity.

Because brothers and sisters, we’d never dare to do it alone - we always do it with Him.

So . . . what sort of salt, then, will you be?

What is the secret to happiness?

Mankind has been asking this question from the very beginning. And if you know anything about human nature, it makes perfect sense.

St. Thomas Aquinas, a doctor of the Church, made an interesting observation that is related to this search. He argued that that without exception, each and every human act, everything that man chooses to do, or refrains from doing, has in mind some “end-state,” some goal or purpose.

Like a telescope, through which a Captain looks in order to determine his destination, we also are “teleological” people - we all act with “an end” in mind. And not just some short-term or intermediate goal, but a final, overarching one, the one towards which everything is ultimately directed.

This “end” is singular in nature. Everyone who has ever existed had this goal in mind:

Happiness.

Every decision you make is ordered towards happiness. Maybe you went to college to obtain some level of intelligence, minus whatever the partying interrupted - but you did both, because the partying was pleasant, and likewise, pursuing an education made you smarter, more capable, self-confident - in a word, happy.

But there also seems to be an aura of mystery surrounding it - somehow, after all these years, it’s still a “secret.” Generations have pursued it, yet so few seem to have found it.

Thousands of books have been written - some of them even admitting that success is rare! One book’s title is: “Lessons on Finding Happiness - Or Something Close to it!”

That probably lines up with our own experience - so close, yet still so far. We also know through experience that certain things, people, or activities might make us happy, but only for so long. The feeling fades over time. We need more of whatever used to make us happy.

That’s because the human heart does not crave something “close” to happiness, nor a happiness that is fleeting or finite. The heart desires a happiness that is complete, total, infinite - a happiness that is “everlasting,” and unable to be taken away.

And the heart will not rest until it finds it.

Which is why our Lord’s very first sermon, the Sermon on the Mount, begins with happiness.

Now, at first glance, that doesn’t seem true. What we just read were the beatitudes - maybe we naturally reduce it to a “list of stuff.” No mention of happiness.

But is that what he said?

The Greek word for “blessed” is “eulogeo” which means to speak good words. But the word used in our Gospel is actually “makarios” - happy.

It’s not, in a sense, a mistranslation, as much as it is the reality - to be “blessed” is nothing other than to be “happy.”

So our Lord’s sermon, for two thousand years, might’ve saved countless generations the trouble of going out and looking for their own version of happiness. God himself had already given us the answer.

But what is so radical about this simple list of eight ways to obtain happiness is that each of them is a paradox. They make no sense to us. And there’s a reason for that. Jesus reveals these beatitudes as antidotes to what the world would propose for human happiness.

For the world, happiness is found in wealth, not poverty of spirit. It’s found in those who rejoice rather than mourn, the strong, rather than the meek. Happiness consists of making our own justice, not depending on others to secure it for us. And mercy? In a world full of people who take advantage of us, the merciful get taken as suckers and fools, and those in need of mercy, are weak. The clean of heart are either innocently gullible, or else prudes, who simply can’t or won’t enjoy all the pleasures that the world offers them. A “peacemaker” is a model of a gun, not a reasonable lifestyle choice.

And those who are persecuted? Fools who are simply too stupid to get on board with the latest body politic, ideology, or movement, or else, too stubborn to bend their values so as to be on the “right side” of history.

These are the “beatitudes” of the kingdom on earth. They teach us to seek happiness in this world through some combination of power, pleasure, status, or wealth. To seek self-autonomy and independence, to use relationships for pleasure, advancement, or ‘networking’ - not necessarily for their own sake.

These values are so common that we probably don’t think twice about them, at least not until they are presented in such stark terms - but in ways implicit and explicit, they are ingrained in our education system, our economic system, our political system, and in some ways, into the very fabric of family life.

If these are the beatitudes that truly make people happy, then I only have one question:

Why is everyone so miserable?

Looking at the statistics, people are more miserable now than ever. Gen Z, our children, have the poorest mental health of any generation on record. They suffer from depression, anxiety, and self-harm. They are the most medicated group of people in human history.

No amount of work, video games, sex, drugs, travel, or anything else seems to satisfy. Less likely to fall in love, marry, or have children. Commitment-phobic and communication struggles, whether in a job or a romance.

Turns out, you can’t send a Snap when you’re on a date, and you can’t truly text how you feel. That “dot dot dot” as you wait for a reply says so much, without saying a word.

YouTube tells women the perfect man is six foot tall with a six-figure salary; meanwhile, “other” areas of the internet tell men what a “perfect” woman ought to be.

And we’re somehow surprised, disappointed, angry, or resentful when neither can live up to the other’s expectations.

Ultimately, we’re left miserable, still searching for the secret to happiness.

The Lord simply offers us another way. In the beatitudes, he shows us what it is to be a human being, fully alive, and what eternal happiness actually consists of - something beyond this world.

The problem with rooting human happiness in the material world is that we were made for another world. We aren’t simply animals acting on instinct - we possess immortal souls, made for eternity. Souls that need so much more than what the world can offer. To be truly happy, man must seek that which can satisfy an infinite desire, one which a finite world is unable to give.

And that’s precisely why the beatitudes seem contrary to our experience. They throw aside worldly values for eternal ones. They forego temporal pleasures for eternal peace and joy.

Those who choose the beatitudes encounter resistance and persecution, precisely because the very example of their lives serves as an indictment against both the world and its values.

The world hates being wrong. And people despise change.

But for those who live these beatitudes, at the end, they will receive what their hearts have always longed for; what each and every action has been ordered towards, whether they knew it or not. And of course, it was there all along, hidden throughout salvation history. In our first reading, Zephaniah reminded Israel to seek justice and humility, to be humble and lowly, and on the day of the Lord, He himself would shelter them.

Turns out, the secret to happiness wasn’t much of a secret after all. So, we can keep searching for it, or we can approach the one who has had the answer all along. The man who offered the world complete, total, and everlasting happiness, in a simple sermon, on a mount.

Since we have entered Ordinary Time, during this particular period between Christmas and Lent, 1st Corinthians will be our second reading.

The second reading can often feel somewhat “out of place.” It’s almost always a letter from Paul, and it’s rarely connected to the other two readings, making it difficult at times to weave it into a homily.

But “out of place” does not then imply “unimportant.”

Paul’s letters permit us a privileged view into the life of early Christians. They show us how the early Church understood Christ’s words, and how the various communities, founded by the apostles, responded to the demands of Christian discipleship.

Many of them focus on the moral life of the new Christian - a Christian who has very recently turned away from the attachments of the world, and is struggling.

Spoiler alert - In Corinth, they struggled more than most.

But to understand why, we have to know something of Corinth, the city for which this letter is named.

Corinth was the capital of a Roman province in Southern Greece. It was a port city, cosmopolitan in nature, comprised of people and cultures from all over the world. It was a city that Rome re-founded and populated with “freedmen,” which was a class of people just above slaves; “undesirables” that Roman citizens wanted out of Rome.

It didn’t have a sort of “ingrained aristocracy,” or class system, so it became a place for “self-made men,” where one who had sufficient motivation could reinvent themselves.

As such, it was embroiled in worldly concerns, with status, power, competition, and pleasure. It was a city full of vice - the slang word “korinthiazo” - to act like a Corinthian - meant to be sexually immoral. The city was also a pagan “melting pot,” containing more than 26 temples or sacred places.

As one biblical commentator described it, “[Corinth was] the New York, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas of the ancient world.”1

Unfortunately, the Church that Paul founded had become an image not of Christ, but of the city in which it dwelt - divided.

Christians who were Jews, Greeks, slaves, and freedmen, rich and poor, were all fighting one another. Factions arose. Competition raged. Some claimed Paul, others claimed Apollos or Cephas. Jews were angry at Gentiles for eating meat sacrificed to pagan Gods. The poor were angry at the rich for excluding them from full participation in worship, especially in the Eucharist. The morally upright were scandalized at the immoral for their behavior, continuing to live with one foot in the Church, and the other foot in the gymnasiums, brothels, temples, and marketplaces.

Division is bad enough - but within a Church in a city like Corinth? The Church simply wouldn’t survive.

So Paul writes a letter. And in it, he doesn’t hold back.

In other letters, Paul offers the carrot. His words can be gentle and caring, kind and endearing. And you’ll find some of that in Corinthians, particularly chapter 13, which is “the wedding reading” - “Love is patient, love is kind.”

But for at least the first 12 chapters, Paul brings the stick, and rhetorically “beats the sin” right out of them.

He calls them “infants” in the faith, reminds them that those who think they are wise are actually fools. He literally throws out a member of the community due to incest, something even the pagans wouldn’t tolerate.

He not only castigates the community for not throwing him out sooner, but tells them “to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, so that his spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord.”

He critiques their pompousness and boasting, yells at them for taking up lawsuits against other believers. And the list goes on and on - and that’s only the first six chapters. Only ten more to go.

Our second reading today is still in the very first chapter, and already he’s focused on unity. He reminds them: the Church can’t be built on rivalries, pitting apostle versus apostle, like the Corinthians did with their pagan philosophers. Something akin to “I went to Harvard, and you went to community college.”

Paull tells us no! All were baptized in Christ. The Gospel itself is the “Good News” that we are all brought together into one body, the Church. That each member must be holy in their conduct. That this church is not divided into Jew, Greek, slave, free, male, or female, but is “catholic” - universal in nature, encompassing all people, no matter their station in life. And built on the authority of the Apostles.

Or as the Nicene Creed states: One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic.

Paul is calling these Corinthians to remember who they are - one united body of believers.

This echoes what we see in our other readings. Jesus, uniting disciples from different backgrounds. Just as Isaiah in the first reading prophesied the light coming to those in darkness, Paul reminds the Corinthians that Christ’s light is what unites us.

It’s the same message for us as a Church. Whether it’s in our archdiocese or in our own family of parishes, division only serves to harm the community, not to build it up.

If Paul teaches us anything, it’s that we will always have to be intentional about unity. Because if we aren’t actively building it, Satan will be right there destroying it. And not only that, just like the Corinthians, we also live in a world rife with opportunity for division - whether it’s economic, racial, political, or otherwise.

If you want division, the world’s your oyster. But in the Church, those conflicts must be left at the door. We don’t have time for them, because all they do is destroy.

Later in life, as a prisoner, Paul wrote to another community in Ephesus, saying:

“I, then, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to live in a manner worthy of the call you have received, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another through love, striving to preserve the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace: one body and one Spirit, as you were also called to the one hope of your call; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.”

I think that it’s the antidote to division we see in Corinth. It’s still the antidote, whenever and wherever conflict arises today. It takes work, effort, sacrifice, and forgiveness.

But above all, it takes love.

Last week, I was at a conference for priests. The theme? The book of Psalms. And I thought to myself, “How are we going to spend an entire week on this?”

But the psalms are more important than we give them credit for - because the psalms are the hymn book of the Church. Maybe we should know them!

One of the presenters said that first and foremost, we have to understand the psalm from the author’s perspective. And when we do, it opens us up to the idea that the author is also writing about us, thousands of years later.

David is the author of our psalm today, and it is a psalm of praise - he has patiently waited on the Lord, in the midst of suffering, and the Lord has rescued him. All of us probably know that David was hunted numerous times, first by King Saul, then later in life by his own son, Absalom.

So at first, it might be surprising to hear praise in the midst of suffering. How do we resolve the contradiction - praise in the midst of suffering?

I think we find the answer in our refrain today: “Here am I Lord, I come to do your will.”

We see this pattern throughout today’s readings. In Isaiah, the Servant of the Lord was “formed from the womb” to gather Israel. John the Baptist reveals that this servant is the Lord - but he also points to what this will require: that the “Lamb of God” will suffer for the sins of the world.

But all of this is foreshadowed in the person of David, who is confronted with a choice: whose will shall he follow - his own, or the Lord’s?

David certainly had opportunities to do his own will. He could have killed King Saul or Absalom, both of whom were trying to kill him.

Yet, David came to do the Lord’s will, not his own. The mission that our Lord gave to David - to be the King of Israel - was fraught with danger, because power is dangerous. We see it every day in the news.

Power must first be purified by humility and suffering, or else it becomes a means of control or abuse.

So the Lord prepared David by permitting him to suffer the effects of abusive power, so that he would be a different sort of King.

Through it all, David never wavered. “Blessed is the man who has placed his trust in the Lord, and has not gone over to the proud, who follow false gods.”

Maybe the most deceptive false god that the proud follow - almost always without knowing it - is the god that they have made of themselves. Power, control, dominance, prosperity.

That’s why the psalm criticizes the sacrifices Israel was offering. They weren’t offered with a contrite heart but as a sort of quid pro quo.

I’ll do something for God, and maybe God will do something for me.

The Lord wanted something different - he asks us to surrender our hearts - to say: “Here am I Lord: I come to do your will.”

Maybe this is where the psalm challenges us. Can we take David’s words and make them our own? Not my own will, but His will?

Are we making ourselves into gods over our own lives? Is there a temptation to control our family, our children, our finances? Perhaps worse is when we are completely powerless. How do we hear David’s words, “to do your will, O my God, is my delight,” when we feel helpless, alone, and afraid?

With everything that is going on in our world and in this country, trying to discern God’s will is painful enough, but actually following it and doing so with joy? It seems impossible.

In the psalm, David is rescued. But in our own lives, maybe we are still waiting to be rescued. Waiting for healing, waiting for forgiveness, waiting for justice.

But while we wait, we have a choice - we can choose to follow our own will, or follow the Lord. To follow in the footsteps of David, or those of Saul or Absalom.

The Lord simply asks us to trust him. To trust in the Father that we know he is, one who loves us, who, far from being an obstacle, is “the way, the truth, and the life.”

When we are in those moments, the Lord himself gives us the words to express what seems inexpressible. We call them psalms.

And in just a moment, we will have that opportunity, because the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, will be here - Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity.

When we receive Him, He becomes our strength, and he shares with us the courage to make David’s words our own:

“Here am I Lord, I come to do your will.”

Matthew’s Gospel is full of “fulfillment.” His mission in his Gospel is to show how Jesus is the fulfillment of everything - that he is the focal point, to which all the Old Testament is ordered.

The Baptism of the Lord is no different. For Matthew, when our Lord entered the water, he carried the entire story of Israel with him:

• In Genesis, the waters of the flood brought forth a new creation. The proof of this was brought to Noah - an olive branch, in the beak of what? A dove.

• The Father calls out, “This is my beloved son,” connecting him to Isaac. He bore the wood for the sacrifice, and our Lord, the wood of the cross.

• Our Lord was baptized in the Jordan, signaling the beginning of a new Exodus, just as Moses had led centuries prior.

• Yet the destination was no longer an earthly promised land - just as the waters of the Jordan were parted when Joshua led the people into the Promised Land, this time, the heavens are parted - pointing us towards a heavenly promised land.

• As Elijah was taken up into heaven at the banks of the Jordan, so our Lord would later ascend to the true heavenly promised land.

• And just as Solomon - the son of David - was washed and anointed King by the priest Zadok, this greater son of David was anointed with the power of the Holy Spirit by a descendant of Zadok, John the Baptist.

All of these allusions to the Old Testament, on their own, would make for a good homily. All of them would teach us something about the nature of our Lord’s baptism, and of our own.

But there is something else happening that is far more profound - something that is essential to understand for our own Baptism: an exchange was about to take place.

But John, at that moment, interrupts; he just couldn’t grasp what was about to happen.

It wasn’t his fault. John was the last and greatest of the prophets, but he was still an Old Testament prophet, thinking in Old Testament terms, trying to reconcile the two.

John knew who the Lord was - he had discerned his divine nature when he said, “the one who is coming after me ranks ahead of me because he existed before me.” John might’ve been a simple man, living in the desert, but he could do math - John was born six months before his cousin.

And so, he knew: this man had no need of repentance. That’s why he tried to prevent the baptism.

How could divinity allow himself to be immersed into this water - the waters polluted with the sin of those being baptized?

John was also the son of a priest - he knew most of Israel’s liturgical laws that regulated their worship concerned purity. God was purity itself. One must be pure to encounter him. People literally died when this was violated or ignored.

That’s why ancient Israel created purposeful separation, “sacred distance” between us and divinity. This was the arrangement of their Temple worship - priests separated from the people, men from women, Israelites from Gentiles, and the Holy of Holies from everyone but the High Priest, and only then, once a year.

Maybe the most telling example of this was the Jewish feast of Yom Kippur, or the “Day of Atonement.” During this feast, two goats were brought before the high priest. One was sacrificed as a sin offering, but the other, a “scapegoat,” the high priest spoke all the sins of the people and the nation, laying them, as it were, on the goat. Afterwards, it was led into the desert, taking with it the sins of the nation.

In John’s Old Testament frame of mind, the things that are pure are always separated from the impure, not polluted by them.

So, his concerns, in that sense, were valid. Jesus simply asked him for a moment’s trust - permit it, and after, you will understand.

During his Baptism, the Lord made an exchange - a divine exchange. His divine nature purified the waters. But in doing so, he absorbed from that same water the filth of our sins, carrying them in his human nature.

He restored human nature’s dignity by assuming onto himself our indignities from the waters. And it was then that the spirit “drove him” into the desert, just like the “scapegoat” at Yom Kippur.

Three years later, he would finally “reconcile all things in himself,” including sin itself, when he was sacrificed on the Cross - taking on the role of the other goat of Yom Kippur.

I’d like to think that for John, something clicked at that moment; that when the clouds parted, and he heard the voice of the Father rejoice in his Son’s act, he finally understood the deeper, more spiritual mission for which he had come. And when our Lord returned from the desert, John saw him in a new light. And so, he cried out, just as we cry out at every Mass, “Behold the lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.”

That rather than distance, our Lord desires “communion.” And the only way he can achieve this is to break down the barriers that separate God and Man - even laws of purity. Man simply cannot do it alone - the entirety of scripture testifies to that. So he does it for us - he takes on human nature, submerging it into the waters of sin and death. He knows we are impure - and he doesn’t care.

Because he also knows, whatever Divinity touches, transforms. Those who enter into the waters after him receive a glorified, deified, supernatural state of existence: a share in his own divine life. And it is he who makes them pure; as pure as he made the waters on the day of his baptism.

Or, in the words of St. Augustine - “God became man, so that man might become God.”

But in order to do so, he had to enter the water.

When we entered the waters of Baptism, we participated in the same exchange. The disfigurements and imperfections of our nature, the sins, were dissolved; and in return, we received a share in the perfections of his divine nature.

As Paul said, when the water touches us, “It is no longer I, but Christ who lives in me.” We become “other Christs,” temples of the Holy Spirit, and we hear the voice of our Father declaring us his children - his beloved sons and daughters.

At the end of the day, our Lord was born on Christmas precisely to enter into that water, so that we might be reborn of water and the Holy Spirit.

And no matter what we’ve done, or what we will do, once we become children of God, we are always children of God. And the Father never abandons his children.

Why?

Because the day we were baptized, it wasn’t simply an event - it became our identity.

And when he looks at us . . . when he looks at you, he sees the face of his Son, living within you.

Today is the feast of the Epiphany. The word itself comes from the Greek - epi - which means “on,” or “upon,” and phaino - “to shine.” So the word “Epiphany” literally means “to shine upon.”

During the Christmas season, this is exactly what begins to happen: Christ, “the light of the world,” comes to “shine upon” the world of darkness.

We see this theme of Epiphany throughout the Christmas season:

• The preface for today, which is what I pray right before the Eucharistic prayer, states, “For today you have revealed the mystery of our salvation in Christ as a light for the nations.”

• At midnight Mass on Christmas, the first reading exclaims, “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light!”

• The Responsorial Psalm for the Christmas Mass at Dawn proclaims, “A light will shine on us this day: the Lord is born for us.”

• And during the Christmas Mass during the Day, we read in the Gospel, “What came to be through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race; the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

But what is this “light” that Christ desires to “shine upon” the world? It has to be more than simply physical light, doesn’t it? And indeed, it is: the light that he brings, and the light that he himself is, is the light of truth. As he said in the Gospel of John, “you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

Light is probably the perfect analogy for truth. Think about it: light is not a single color - “white light,” contains within itself every spectrum of visible light. One only needs a prism, or to look at a rainbow, to understand this.

What actually happens when we see “color,” is that the pigments in the object absorb some wavelengths and reflect back others. What is reflected back, is what we perceive as color.

Maybe another way of saying it: light discloses the reality and the nature of the thing it touches. The light is not changed by the object it encounters; it remains completely unaffected. Rather, the light “discloses” or “reveals” that which it encounters. The object cannot hide what it is once the light arrives.

What light is to an object, the truth is to the soul. Christ is the light of truth that “shines upon” the soul of mankind, revealing what it finds.

That’s why many are terrified of the light. Because when we are confronted by the reality of the Truth - when confronted by Christ - his light reveals who we truly are.

There is no hiding from it or reasoning with it, no possibility of changing our color at that moment, so to speak. Nor is there any possibility of us changing the light to conform to our personal, subjective opinions.

The truth is not subject to change. We conform ourselves to it - the truth does not conform itself to us.

And not only does it reveal the things about us that we don’t want others to see, but reveals the things about us that even we refuse to believe about ourselves.

That’s why our Lord says in John:

“People preferred darkness to light, because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come toward the light, so that his works might not be exposed.”

If that’s the case, then maybe the question that confronts us this Epiphany is this: What will be our response to the light?

Our Gospel today gives us living portraits of how different hearts respond when the light appears: the example of the Three Magi, and the example of Herod, with the chief priests and scribes. In a way, every possible response can be found in one of these two groups.

The three magi in our Gospel chose obedience and humility. Imagine finding a star that foretells the birth of a great King, only to find him in a cave, lying in a manger - a feeding trough for animals - surrounded by cattle? Who could blame them if they took one look and then left - after all, these were educated men.

They chose instead to trust in what the star meant, and they bowed down to worship this child, giving their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, rather than to whatever God they had previously worshiped.

They chose to allow the light to transform them.

Herod chose deception and violence. Rather than welcome this new king with joy, he tried to snuff out the light. The light, for him, was a threat.

The chief priests and the scribes, while they provided the answer to where the child could be found, were still left “troubled.” Maybe to them, a newborn king was no threat. Maybe they, like so many, thought they could safely ignore, negotiate with, or control the light.

Thirty years later, they found out these options were impossible, when that same light began to reveal them as hypocrites.

Which of these two examples will we be?

There is probably little doubt that all of us, in some way, have struggled with the light - or struggle with the truth. Maybe some of us know what it feels like to hide from it. It takes courage to permit the light to show us the wounds we need to heal. To show us the ways that we need to change our hearts.

Each of us has a choice as we begin this new year, in how we encounter the light. But if we choose to open our hearts to it, to put aside our fear and anxiety, I think what we will find, is what we heard in our first reading today.

That when we allow the light of Christ to “shine upon” us, and transform us, “Then you shall be radiant at what you see, your heart shall throb and overflow,” and together with those three wise men, we too can “proclaim the praises of the Lord.”

Every new year begins with the Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary under the title “Mother of God.”

That title tends to ruffle a lot of feathers, especially in Protestant quarters. If you were to ask the question to one of your Protestant friends, “Is Mary the Mother of God?,” you would probably get a mixed bag of responses.

Probably the most common one is sort of an awkward “yes . . . but!,” almost like they are holding their noses or saying it through clenched teeth.

What most of them are trying to do is avoid honoring Mary as somehow special and unique, while at the same time upholding the Christian understanding that Jesus is God - fully man, and fully divine.

What many say is that Mary was simply a “vessel” - a vessel that doesn’t really deserve any particularly special praise.

Unfortunately, that’s hardly biblical. “Blessed are you among women” is in the Bible as well. But, what I think it comes down to is fear. Mary, at least to them, is such a particularly “Catholic” thing. For a lot of them, they probably feel like if they’re “in for a penny, they’re in for a pound.” That if they give just an inch, if they show any sort of love or devotion to our Blessed Mother, that they will catch the “COVID of Catholicism,” and before you know it, they will be praying Rosaries and putting a statue of Mary in their gardens.

To be fair, that is how it starts . . . but I digress . . .

But if there was one particular dogma of the Church that should unite both Protestants and Catholics, it’s this one. And what they might not realize is that by denying Mary her rightful title, they are risking making the same mistake that earned her that title in the first place.

The Church Fathers understood that to deny the title “Mother of God” to Mary, is to deny that Christ has a divine nature at all. And when someone does so, they cease to be Christian. We don’t follow Christ because he was a good man. We follow him because he is God.

The Church, in her early years, understood precisely what was at stake with this title. In the 5th century, Constantinople was the most important city in the World. Rome had been sacked in 410 AD by the Visigoths, and Constantinople was effectively the city running the Roman Empire.

The Archbishop of Constantinople, Nestorius, began teaching that Mary should be called “christotokos,” meaning “Christ Bearer,” instead of the more ancient title “theotokos,” which means “God Bearer.” It is from this word that we derive the title “Mother of God.”

Nestorius wasn’t stupid - he was asserting something by way of omission. It was a deceptive way of attacking the divinity of Christ. But he knew he could not attack Him directly, so he attacked His mother.

Nestorius taught that no union between the human and the divine was possible. He believed that in Christ, there existed two persons - one with a divine nature, and one with a human nature. Mary, then, was the mother of Christ - the human person, not the mother of the Logos - the second divine person of the Trinity.

But if this were the case, several problems would arise. If God didn’t take on human nature, then how did he redeem our fallen nature? The entire point of the Incarnation was for God to become man without losing any of the divinity that was His. In this way, he would redeem a broken humanity with his very own human nature. And by doing so with his divine nature as well, would have an eternal effect.

The Jesus of Nestorius’s theology not only became a sort of schizophrenic with multiple personality disorder, but it also destroyed the very economy and logic of salvation.

Hearing this, the Council of Ephesus was convened in 431 AD. At the council, the Church, led by St. Cyril, condemned this view.

Rather, the Church taught what we now understand as the “hypostatic union.” That Jesus is one divine person - in Greek, hypostasis, possessing both a human and divine nature. Christ, therefore, is one divine person, to whom Mary gave birth - not to “parts” of him, as if he could be divided up, but all of him.

So the council reaffirmed her title of “Theotokos.” And as St. Cyril affirmed, and the Pope declared:

“If anyone will not confess that the Emmanuel is very God, and that therefore the Holy Virgin is the Mother of God, inasmuch as in the flesh she bore the Word of God made flesh [as it is written, The Word was made flesh] let him be anathema.”

Now, if some of that confused you - “hypostatic union” this, “divine and human nature” that, don’t worry - it confuses everyone. Theological language is necessary to help us avoid falling into error, but there is no theological language that can fully account for the mystery of the Incarnation. It’s impossible.

So . . . is Mary special? Unique? More than a mere vessel?

St. Anselm, reflecting on Mary, answered that question the best. And I think that, far better than a bunch of theological propositions, maybe we can just meditate on it, and ponder the very mystery itself:

“To Mary, God gave his only-begotten Son, whom he loved as himself. Through Mary, God made himself a Son, not different but the same: by nature, Son of God, and Son of Mary."

The whole universe was created by God, and God was born of Mary. God created all things, and Mary gave birth to God. The God who made all things gave himself form through Mary, and thus he made his own creation. He who could create all things from nothing, would not remake his ruined creation without Mary.

God, then, is the Father of the created world, and Mary, the mother of the re-created world. God is the Father by whom all things were given life, and Mary, the mother through whom all things were given new life. For God begot the Son, through whom all things were made, and Mary gave birth to him, as the Savior of the world.

Without God’s Son, nothing could exist; without Mary’s Son, nothing could be redeemed.”

“Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.”

Today we celebrate the Feast of the Holy Family. All of our readings today focus on the family, particularly on what family life should be like - grounded in love.

In our second reading, Paul is writing to new Christians, to whom this concept would have been foreign. It would certainly have been at odds with how they were raised, where family was much more concerned with the social dynamics of power.

So Paul writes a letter containing what is known as “household codes.” With an exception or two, they are not all that earth-shattering to us. But for the time of Paul, they were revolutionary.

To understand why, we have to know what they were intended to replace.

Rome’s law was based on the “Laws of the Twelve Tables,” which articulated the rights and duties of Roman citizens. They formed the basis of Roman law for over 1,000 years, beginning around 449 BC. Included in these tables were household codes.

In Ancient Rome, the overarching code was that the male patriarch of the family had complete and absolute power over his family. A father could sell his son into slavery. He could kill his newborn child if judged “defective” in some way. He could not only divorce his wife for almost any reason, but he could also dissolve the marriages of his children. And both wife and children were considered equivalent to property.

Into that world, Paul preached a radically different vision. Hear Paul’s words again, illuminated by the historical context: Instead of a “Father” as an authoritarian despot, Paul says, “put on, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving one another.”

But it’s the second part that may need some explanation: “Wives, be subordinate to your husbands, as is proper in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives, and avoid any bitterness toward them. Children, obey your parents in everything, for this is pleasing to the Lord. Fathers, do not provoke your children, so they may not become discouraged.”

When we hear a word like “subordinate” or “obey,” we tend to tense up. Taken at face value, we might see them as relics of a patriarchal age.

Even worse, some in the past - and still today - use lines like this as “God-given permission” for abusive behavior by husbands, or that obedience to parents means ignoring unacceptable physical or emotional abuse.

Unfortunately, that’s what “proof texting” without context will get you, and it’s an abhorrent distortion of scripture.

In addition, our culture might critique these Christian household codes as just another example of a “hidden patriarchy” within the Church, one that subjugates women in particular; a modern-day household code of injustice and inequality.

How do we respond to something like that?

Paul is not writing to preserve Roman culture. He’s writing to transform it. In Rome, the family existed to serve the ambitions of the father. For Paul, each member has a unique dignity because they are part of an even greater family: the family of God.

Husband and wife together become “caretakers” of this family, or rather, “servants.” Worldly successes become a secondary concern. Paul directs them, that in “whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus.”

If we miss that, then it makes perfect sense why some might turn bitter when they hear a line such as “wives, be subordinate to your husbands.” Paul adds a qualifier, a stipulation, when he says, “as is proper in the Lord.”

There is absolutely nothing “proper in the Lord” that can ever resemble the domination demanded by Roman society.

The Church has always taught this. Almost a century ago, Paul XI wrote an encyclical, Casti Connubii, on marriage. In it, he made clear that this word, “subordination,” does not somehow deny or reject the liberty that belongs to a woman, both as a human being or as a wife.

Then he offers a beautiful image. He says, “For if the man is the head, the woman is the heart, and as he occupies the chief place in ruling, so she may and ought to claim for herself the chief place in love.”

In other words, husband and wife are equal in dignity, but distinct in role, just as every member of the Body of Christ is equal in worth but not identical in function.

A body only has one head, but the head cannot live without the heart, and can do nothing without hands and feet. All the parts are essential. All serve the life of the whole.

Now you might say, “Father! I still heard the word “ruling” in there - is a man still “ruling” over a woman?

Maybe a better question is, what does Christian “rule” look like?

Not domination, like Rome, but with sacrificial love.

St. John Chrysostom reminds us of precisely this when he wrote:

“[Men,] pay attention to love’s high standard. If you take the premise that your wife should submit to you, as the church submits to Christ, then you should also take the same kind of careful, sacrificial thought for her that Christ takes for the church. Even if you must offer your own life for her, you must not refuse.”

This is precisely what the Holy Family themselves lived in our Gospel today. Imagine, just after Jesus was born, Joseph wakes them up in the middle of the night and leads them hundreds of miles away to a foreign land.

Why would Mary have submitted to such a request if she hadn’t experienced “love’s high standard” from this man? He gave everything to her, he never abandoned her, he took her into his own home, and was ready to raise her child as his own.

That’s who Mary submitted to - not a command, but love.

In the same way, our families are called to become “schools of love,” places where we learn “compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving one another.”

And if you’ve ever wondered how Jesus, through His human nature, learned to rule with justice, mercy, peace, and compassion, the answer is simple.

He learned it in His family. He learned it from a “household code,” where love was the law.

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