What it's all about...

Homily

Third Sunday in Ordinary Time

(Last Mass as Rector)

Today, Jesus grows up and leaves home.  Saint Matthew tells us that he left Nazareth and went to live in Capernaum, where he began, for the first time to preach the Gospel: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”  

It is there that he calls Peter and Andrew to be fishers of men and James and John. to be his disciples.

And so began the Church, as Christ sends out Apostles and their successors the Bishops, and we Priests, their helpers to proclaim the good news:  “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

That’s what I’ve been doing here at our beloved Cathedral for the past two and a half years, proclaiming: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

To the extent I have been successful, I thank God for using his unworthy servant’s few talents.  To the extent I have failed, I ask his mercy and your forgiveness.

And now we will go on, you and I, leaving Nazareth once again and trying to discern what God is asking of us in Capernaum.  

There are two great pieces of advice which God gives to you and me as we move on.  They come by way of the words of our own Saint Paul in his letter to the Corinthians.  It seems that the rector of Corinth has recently completed his term as well.  His name was Apollos.  And some really like Apollos and others really liked Cephas and others really liked Paul.  And now they’re fighting about who was really the best rector that Corinth ever had.  Some are saying “I belong to Paul,” or “I belong to Apollos,” or “I belong to Cephas.”

Paul excoriates them: “Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?”  No.  Apollos and Cephas and Paul and Msgr Mongelluzzo and Father Reidy and Monsignor Moroney and Monsignor Johnson are not sent by God to be admired, but to proclaim: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

And that is all a Priest is: A man, taken from among men, just like you.  Just as strong as you and just as weak as you.  Just as talented as you and just as ignorant as you.  As Jesus was a man in all things but sin, Priests are men in all things, sin included.

So why does God choose Priests from among such as us?  Why not send angels to be his Priests?  Because his love for us is so great that he chooses us, handfuls of dust to be temples of his glory and forms us in his image to love. 

Indeed, the greatest Priests I have ever known have founded their ministry on this truth: that we are weak and only God is strong.  I once heard a paraphrase of Saint Paul at an ordination:  May you be strong, loving and wise.  Strong enough to know how weak and broken you are, but a channel of God’s strength on your best days.  Loving enough to know how selfish you can be but ever trying to empty yourself so that God’s love might flow through you to those most in need.  And wise enough to know how foolish you can be so that it is God’s wisdom you preach and not your silly ideas.

The first and most fundamental characteristic of the good Priest is to know that he is not God.

2. And the second is like unto it.  He must be willing to offer sacrifice.

From ancient times, the offering of sacrifice has been a messy business.  It originally entailed the slaying of bulls and goats, the sprinkling of their blood and the anointing of the horns of the altar with their entrails.  By the time it was over the Priest was covered in the sacrifice from head to foot.

The Priesthood of Christ is quite the same.  It requires the total self-sacrifice of the great High Priest upon the altar of the cross.  It is kenotic, with nothing held back.  Not one drop of blood, not one ounce of life, not one final breath.  All is given in a definitive sacrifice in obedience to the Father’s will.

And that is the Priesthood into which I have been ordained.  As a Priest in the second order, I share a part of the fulness of the Priesthood of Christ to which the Bishop has been ordained.  He has ordained me to Priesthood in the presbyeteral rank to offer sacrifice: to offer the saving paschal sacrifice of Christ upon this altar in your name, so that joined with you and on your behalf I join the sacrifices of your lives to the perfect sacrifice of calvary and thus transform the bread and wine you have offered into the Body and Blood of the Lord, the perfect sacrifice of praise which has redeemed the world.  

This Priesthood into which I have been ordained and the Priesthood of the Faithful into which you have been Baptized call us to something more than the performance ritual acts, or the pronouncement of ritual words.  For the saying of empty words and the making of distracting gestures is something a magician does.  It’s usually an illusion and make believe.

But what we do on this altar is anything but make believe.  It is the most real thing any of us will ever do.  For it is the joining of the sacrifice of our lives to the sacrifice of the cross, the source of every authentic human value and the summit of every good thing we will ever done.  This is the center of our lives!

So whether in Nazareth, or in Capernaum, Worcester or Boston, Lancaster or Rome: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

Whether the one leading you is Power or Goggin, McGann, Slattery, Kavanaugh,  Ellwood, Daley, Burke, Kelleher, Manahan, Mongelluzzo, Reidy, or Moroney: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

For in the end, that’s what it’s all about.

Monsignor James P. Moroney

Rector

Humility

Second Sunday in Ordinary Time

Homily

Let me tell you about Ann.  I met her in my first assignment, almost three decades ago, and she’s been dead for almost 25 years.  But I will never forget her.

She was a quadriplegic...lost her arms and legs to diabetes, and she suffered from a host of other problems as she approached her eightieth year.

But each time I went to see her, no matter her physical state, she was always more concerned with me than anything else.  Are you getting enough sleep?  All your responsibilities as a young priest.  It must be so difficult some days.  God bless you for all you do, and coming to see me when you’ve got all that to worry about.

I never left her sick bed without feeling loved, and cared for, by Ann, and by God.

And all because she possessed the first greatest among all the virtues: humility.  She knew she was little and God was big; and it was that knowledge that embraced every person she ever met.

Pride

This greatest virtue is the opposite of the greatest sin: pride.  Pride, which according to Saint Thomas Aquinas is the root cause of every sin.

Benjamin Franklin said as much when he wrote in Poor Richard’s Almanac: "There is perhaps no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride. Beat it down, stifle it, mortify it as much as one pleases, it is still alive. Even if I could conceive that I had completely overcome it, I should probably be proud of my humility.”

And once embraced, pride takes hold of your soul like a festering cancer.  It makes you seek out the esteem of other people, to thirst voraciously for adulation and acclaim.  The praise of the masses becomes a drug to which I am addicted, with which I fill up all the emptiness and senselessness of my life.  

I become an ostentatious and pompous demi-god God, standing so far above the maddening crowd on a pillar of my own ego that no one can touch me, no one can draw near.

They are the arbiters of all that is good and all that is bad, most often determined by what’s good and bad for them!  Such self-made Gods quickly turn into hypocrites, damned to their own narcissism, and there is but one remedy for their disease: humility.

Humility

That’s why we hear this morning from the Baptist’s lips a description of who God incarnate is.  For when we behold God made man, we discover who man has been made by God to be.

He is a lamb. Not a big sheep. Just a lamb,  The littlest, the weakest, and the least significant of all the sheep.  He is as meek as a baby in a manger and as vulnerable as a man nailed to a cross.  

He is the lamb of God, sacrificed for the sins of the world, by whose blood we are redeemed.  And from the cross, the altar upon which the Lamb is sacrificed for our sins, he looks down at us and tells us to love others as he has loved us.  To empty ourselves, to give ourselves entirely to love, to embrace the humility of the little Lamb who was slain for our sins.

And if we embrace that humility, we change.  By admitting our brokenness, our sinfulness, our inability to truly please God on our own or to earn our own salvation, our utter dependence on his mercy, we change.

We realize we no longer have to play God.  We can be his children and he can be God.  

We no longer need defend ourselves or be surprised or overwhelmed by our own faults and failings.  St. Theresa of Avila had it right when she said that humility is simply living in the truth (andar en la verdad).  We have no reason to lie, for we know how little we are and how great God is and how much we are dependent on his mercy.

Dr. Booker T. Washington was perhaps the most accomplished and famous black educator of his day and the President of the Tuskegee Institute of Alabama, but that was not his greatest quality.

A few days after he was named President of the University he was walking in an exclusive white neighborhood where he was stopped by a wealthy woman.  Not knowing Dr. Washington by sight, she asked him if he would like to earn a few dollars by chopping wood for her. He smiled, rolled up his sleeves, and chopped a half a cord of wood, carried the logs into the house, and stacked them by the fireplace.   But as he walked away, a little girl who recognized him told the poor woman who had chopped her wood.

The woman hurried to Dr. Washington;s office to apologize. "It's perfectly all right, Madam," he replied. "Occasionally I enjoy a little manual labor. Besides, it's always a delight to do something for a friend." 

Dr. Washington, living in a time when the color of your skin could still get you lynched, knew what it was like to fragile.  And from that knowledge grew a great humility that made him stronger than all the powers of the earth.

Winston Churchill was once asked, "Doesn't it thrill you to know that every time you make a speech, the hall is packed to overflowing?" "It's quite flattering," replied Sir Winston. "But whenever I feel that way, I always remember that if instead of making a political speech I was being hanged, the crowd would be twice as big."

Pride goeth before the fall, the old saying goes.

And humility is the path to salvation.

Monsignor James P. Moroney

Rector

To The Good Priests of Owensboro

It was a joy being with you for a few snowy days.

If you click the following, a copy of all my Powerpoint presentations will download to your computer automatically:

Owensboro Powerpoints

Also, here's a list of links you might find helpful:

Resources for the New Missal

USCCB Roman Missal Resources 

Order of Mass (approved and confirmed)

General Instruction of the Roman Missal

Introduction to the Lectionary for Mass

Code of Canon Law

Catholic Liturgical Library

Monsignor Moroney’s Other Sites

Blog on Latest Conferences

A New Translation for a New Roman Missal DVD

Cathedral of Saint Paul Blog

Videos of Saint John’s Seminary Seminar on the new Roman Missal

The Mass Explained: A Popular Guide

Of Snow on the Lake and the New Roman Missal

I'm in Kentucky, speaking to the priests of Owensboro for a couple of days on the new translation of the Roman Missal.  Speaking of which, today the Vox Clara Study text on the new Roman Missal is being released.  It consists of one hundred and sixty pages of excerpts from the new Roman Missal and is available on the Midwest Theological Forum Website.

Study Text on the Roman Missal

Here are some more details:

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ON THE NEW ROMAN MISSAL

When will the new translation of the Missale Romanum take effect?

The President of each National Conference of Catholic Bishops will issue a decree establishing the “first use” date of the new Missal.  The President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has established the First Sunday of Advent, November 27, 2011, as the first date on which the new texts may be used in the Sacred Liturgy in the dioceses of the United States of America.

When will the new Roman Missal be available?

The complete ritual book will, in all likelihood, be available some months before the implementation date.  The work required for the publication of a liturgical text of more than twelve hundred pages is significant.  The publication in the United States is overseen by the USCCB Committee on Divine Worship through its Secretariat in Washington D.C.

What should be happening in the meantime?

As Pope Benedict XVI noted upon approval of the final text, programs of catechesis are a necessary preparation for an effective reception of the new Roman Missal, in order that the new translations might “be introduced with due sensitivity” (Pope Benedict XVI to the Vox Clara Committee, April 28, 2010).  The USCCB has developed a Parish Guide to Implementing the Roman Missal as well as a website devoted exclusively to catechesis in preparation for the new Roman Missal (http://www.nccbuscc.org/romanmissal/).

What other resources exist for preparation for the new Roman Missal?

Many publishers in many countries have produced useful resources for this important catechetical endeavor.  Among the international resources are two DVDs: A New Translation for a New Roman Missal (http://www.romanmissal.us/dvd.htm) and Become One Body, One Spirit in Christ (http://www.usccbpublishing.org/productdetails.cfm?sku=88907).

Are the new translations available for study purposes?

Excerpts from the new translation are available from two sources.  The Order of Mass is available on the USCCB website (http://www.nccbuscc.org/romanmissal/).  A one hundred and sixty page study text with excerpts from the new Roman Missal has just been published by the Vox Clara Committee under the title: The Roman Missal: A Study Text with Excerpts from the New English Translation.

What is contained in the Vox Clara Study Text?

The study text includes the complete Order of Mass with the four major Eucharistic Prayers as well as all the major prayers for the Sundays of Advent, Christmas, Lent and Easter.  The prayers from the sanctoral cycle for November, as well as excerpts from Masses and Prayers for Various Needs and Occasions and the Votive Mass for Saint Joseph are also included.

How can the Vox Clara Study Text be purchased?

Copies may be ordered from Amazon.com or from Midwest Theological Forum (http://www.theologicalforum.org/).  The Roman Missal: A Study Text with Excerpts from the New English Translation (ISBN 978-1-936045-40-2) is available for fifteen dollars per copy, plus shipping and handling.  Orders of one hundred or more copies are available for nine dollars each, plus shipping and handling during the initial promotion period.

Of Reindeers and Grudges

Homily

Baptism of the Lord

Two weeks ago the Christmas season began and this Cathedral Church was packed.   Do you remember?  Two weeks ago we were like shepherds, gazing at the Christ child in the manger. Last week we were magi kneeling in adoration before the Blessed Virgin and her Divine Child.  This week we stand on the banks of the Jordan River as God’s own voice calls down from a cloud: “This is my beloved Son: listen to him.”

Many people were like the shepherds, gazing with wonder upon the face of the baby Jesus, sensing his divinity, mystified by his beauty, but then they left their pews and then returned home from Christmas Mass to open presents. Oh, they’ll be back...they’ll be back at Easter to see the lilies, and maybe even, if they’re really good, they’ll get ashes and palms.  But  when during the in-between times they get that feeling that there must be something more, they’ll change the channel, or have another drink, or do something fun to keep them busy until the feeling goes away.

More than  90% of all Americans profess belief in God. But so many of them are like the shepherds, staring at him in a manger, but unsure of who or what he is, and unwilling to listen to the longing in their bones.  Sadly unwilling to change their lives.  Desperately unwilling to become something more than silent spectators.

And then there’s us.  The wise men, who have seen his star at its rising. We come to do him homage weeks after his birth.  We worship him and genuflect in adoration. Like angels we praise him, kneeling and standing, in the same pew each Sunday and we are even generous with our envelopes. We go to Mass and do our part and, to be honest, hope that someday God will do his.

We Magi are good people. We’re among the 23% who go to church every Sunday and we’re not here just to gaze on poinsettias and lilies. We really pray and we really want to love God.

Nut in some ways, we Magi are just as forgetful as the absent shepherds, for, on Jordan’s bank we hear God’s voice anointing his only-begotten Son from the heavens, commanding us to listen to him

Not just look.  Not just adore.  But listen to him.  Listen to the Word who is truth and mercy and love.

And still, just as the season of the birth of the truth comes to a close, we lie.  So easily, so cheaply, that we barely even notice.  

Last Sunday I was chatting with a precoscious four-year-old parishioner.  Kneeling on the floor beside him, I inquired whether he had a favorite gift from Santa Claus.  Oh Yes! he proudly declared.  I got a reindeer!  A reindeer? I asked.  You mean like a toy or a doll?  No, he stamped his right foot, I got a real reindeer with a red nose and antlers and he flies and everything.  I look up and saw his mother smiling don on us.  He got a puppy, she softly chuckled, but he thinks that a reindeer sounds a lot more impressive.

But I’m not much better than the four-year-old! Last week, I was engaged in a conversation about a new book on an esoteric subject about which I style myself as something of an aficionado.  “You’ve read it, haven’t you,” a colleague looked at me and asked.  I’d never heard of the book before, but I was tempted...so tempted (in fact, the lie was getting ready to roll off my tongue) I was so tempted to say, “Of course...of course, I have read it...what a foolish question! Me?  Of course I’ve read it!”

Standing right in front of the manger, we are tempted to betray him for the sake of feeling important, of gaining advantage, of avoiding trouble, or getting out of something.  We lie so that we can look like the coolest kid in the school yard.

I am the truth, he says.  And we lie.

And that’s not all.  We turn from the crib of him who teaches us to forgive others as we want to be forgiven, harboring post-holiday grudges against that relative or friend or other rotten person we were forced to see again over Christmas.

Forgive your brother or sister seventy times seven?! That’s fine Lord, but you don’t know my mother-in-law!  Do you know what she said to me?!  Can you imagine how he treated us?!  The nerve of people like that!  Where do they get off?  I can’t believe there are people like that in this world!

And so we cling to our post-Christmas grudges as our most precious gifts: grudges against ever hurt or offense, carefully recorded for future reference and ammunition. Mothers refuse to talk to daughters because of what she did to me, sons cut off their fathers because of what he said to me and even husbands and wives turn each other off because of what happened that day in 1987.  Sometimes we even hold grudges for people who aren’t even alive anymore. 

“We do this with the false idea that somehow we are making them suffer by being hurt and angry with them.”  If I can just harbor this grudge long enough, I’ll exact my revenge.  Someone has got to suffer for this.

And we’re right, in a perverse sort of way.  Someone is going to suffer.  But its not the one we think.  For the grudge is corrosive, its acidic.  It eats alive the one who clings to it, gnawing at your soul like a malignant obsession, damning you to a dark, cold hell of your own making.

He is the truth incarnate, and we sleeze our way around it, avoiding all the inconvenient truth.

He says love greatly and forgive generously, and we cling desperately to our resentment and our precious grudges.

But you know, good fellow Magi, and shepherds, all the same: It’s never too late to go back to the manger, to home to Christmas all throughout the year:

and to gaze into the child’s eyes like shepherds on a starlit night.

and adore him, like wise men, on bended knee.

It’s never too late to home to the truth,

It’s never to late to home to mercy,

And its never too late to listen to him,

the beloved, only-begotten of God.

For one last time, Come, let us adore him!

Monsignor James P. Moroney

Rector

Cathedral Conference for Life - Streaming Video

Streaming Videos of four of the presentations from the Cathedral Conference for Life are now available as streaming video:

Cathedral Conference for Life Streaming Video

The presentations by Susan Wills (The Measure of Love is to Love Without Measure), Richard Doerflinger (Legislative Issues), Bishop Robert McManus (USCCB Healthcare Directives) and Monsignor James Moroney (Praying for Life).

Light Dispelling Darkness

Homily

Epiphany 2011

In the very beginning it was dark.  So dark that chaos enveloped the earth.  But with the breath of God, Fiat Lux, the sun warmed the day and the moon and the stars guided the night.

And each day since, we have been a part of a never-ending struggle between darkness and light.  The darkness seeks to vanquish the light...the powers of darkness seek to return us to the primordial chaos from which God has delivered us.

But God’s creative love perdures.  As a pillar of light leading us into the promised land.

And in the fullness of time, a star leads wise men to him who is the light of the world, who through the blinding light of his paschal dying and rising vanquishes the darkness of sin, and even of death.  So that we never need be afraid of the dark, ever again.

That light found a home deep within each one of us on the day of our Baptism and we will be judged some day on how well we have kept that light burning.  He who is light will look deep within our hearts to see if that flame has survived the onslaughts of those dark forces with which we do battle every day and whether our lamps are still burning brightly with his love.  

For if they are, our souls will be joined to the lights of heaven to illumine a shining city on a hill for all to see we.  If are illumined by his truth and let his mercy shine on all who hate us, then the powers of darkness and death don't stand a chance.

For in the end, when there will be no more need for the sun or the moon or the stars, the Son of God will be our light, as the heavenly Jerusalem, our final home, gleams in his reflected splendor for all eternity.

Light dispelling darkness is our hope, our choice, and our destiny.

Monsignor James P. Moroney

Rector 

New Years and the Mother of God

Homily

New Years 2011

Just a few hours ago we entered January, the month which takes its name from the Roman god Janus, the god with two faces, one looking to the past and the other looking to the future. 

Thus it was that the final hours of 2010 were filled with endless retrospectives of the past year’s events, which no one can truly understand, and the projection of New Year’s resolutions which no one really intends to keep.

The reason why neither the retrospectives have much meaning, however, is that both are largely rooted in self-interest.  What happened to us in this past year and how did world events affect our self interests?  Or what could make my life better in the future and how could 2011 be better for me than 2010?

Our contemplation of past and present is usually rooted, therefore, in “what’s in it for me?”

The Blessed Virgin Mother, by contrast, looks at the past and the future in an entirely different way.  When the shepherds arrive at the manger and report what the angels message of great joy, we are told that Mary treasured these stories in her heart.  And, again, when in last week’s Gospel the child Jesus grew in wisdom and grace, we are told that Mary treasured all that was happening in her heart.

For the Mother of God, she who bore God’s Word made flesh in her womb, the events of the world were to be treasured and pondered by a heart ever seeking to find God and his Holy Will in the events of yesterday and tomorrow.

The meaning of recollection, then, was never to seek herself, but to look for how God had been working in her life.  The meaning of resolution was never to seek self interest, but only to give herself more fully to God’s plan.

Why, then, do we always begin the year by commemorating the Motherhood of the Blessed Virgin Mary?  Because, like her, we are called to consecrate to God all our yesterdays and all our tomorrows.  For he who made all time, gives us another year to discern his plans and to do his will.

May he give us the grace and the strength to do his Holy Will in each of the days which remain in each of our lives.

Monsignor James P. Moroney

Rector