All Saints Solemnity – “A” – November 1, 2014

From the Pastor, PNCC /

The witness of life of so many of the saints of the Church has been characterized by joy. We read in some stories of martyrs who suffered horrific deaths in the cause of Christ that they so looked forward to being united with their Lord that they sang on the way to their execution. It wasn’t that they despised life in this world, only that they saw the life of the kingdom was much better.

Our readings today remind us of this strange truth. The vision of John reveals great rejoicing in heaven among the angels and saints at the victory of God. This was won first of all by the Lamb of God, and then by all those who wash their robes in the blood of the Lamb, all those who have been through persecution. The teaching of Jesus in Beatitudes makes this truth clearer still; the values that He promotes are contrary to human expectations.

Confidence in the providence of a loving God will bring us more happiness that anxiety over our bank balance. Human and material resource are put at the service of wealth. Human beings and the environment are sacrificed for the sake of making a few people wealthy. Jesus warns us today that only the gentle will have the earth for their heritage. The followers of Jesus are urged to retain their ability to weep with those who mourn, to forgive those who do us harm, to hang on a vision of the beauty of life and human relationships, and to do all this with a passion – to have a hunger and thirst for all that is right and just. This is what Jesus himself would do. This is the way to build the kingdom of God.

So today we celebrate the feast of All Saints, all those who have lived the Christian life faithfully. There are thousands of ordinary men and women of every age who have faced up to the challenges of their own time and place and found strength to do so in their relationship with Jesus. Now it is our turn. We belong to community of saints. We share the witness of all those who believe that the love of God is still at work in our hearts and in our lives.

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Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time – “A” – October 26, 2014

From the Pastor /

Jesus had problems with the legal establishment of His time – the Pharisees, Sadducees and scribes – especially when He taught in the Temple at the end of His ministry. In today’s Gospel, the Pharisees try Him with the question: “Which is the greatest commandment of the Law?” The issue was not actually about which commandment took precedence over all others. Rather, Jesus was being asked to express an opinion on whether there was a single commandment whose greatness lay in its capacity to sum up the meaning of the whole Law, with all 613 of its precepts. It’s easy to imagine the endless debates on the subject among the great and the good of the religious leadership: everyone had an opinion on the matter. It is also easy to see how the question must have seemed perfect to trap this amateur preacher who was causing problems with His radical new teaching.

Jesus doesn’t give a direct answer to the question. Instead, He chooses two commandments: from Deuteronomy and from Leviticus. He says, “on these two commandments hang the whole Law and the Prophets.” We are reminded of pictures in a gallery, suspended by two chains. Similarly, the two commandments chosen by Jesus are like two chains that uphold the entire Law. The two commandments are well known. First comes a quotation from Deuteronomy 6: “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.” The second, from Leviticus 19, resembles it, says Jesus: “You must love your neighbor as yourself.” We are left with the question of why Jesus chose these two, and why He says the second resembles the first. One way we can explore this is to consider Jesus’ teaching on the conditions of discipleship. To be a disciple, says Jesus, it is necessary to renounce self and take up the cross and follow Him. Jesus’ total commitment to His Father is shown through His talking up of the cross: the cross shows He loves His Father with all His heart, soul, strength and mind. In taking up the cross He renounces himself. He continually places the needs of humanity before His own needs: that is, He loves His neighbor as himself. To be a neighbor is to address the needs of others before one’s own needs. So loving God with all our energy, and loving neighbor as self, sums up the Law because it describes perfectly the ministry of Jesus, who is the fulfillment of the Law.

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Twenty Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time – “A” – October 19, 2014 – Heritage Sunday

From the Pastor, PNCC /

As an immigrant living in the United States it is very difficult to maintain one’s culture and identity intact, since it’s only natural to be influenced by our new lifestyle and the predominant culture. However, for all of of who immigrated as adults, this influence cannot erase what what we have deep-rooted within ourselves and while assimilating and learning the new ways, we embrace with pride the one thing we could not leave behind – our HERITAGE.

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Solemnity of the Christian Family – October 12, 2014

From the Pastor, PNCC /

God’s word of wisdom to children is simple: Children, obey your parents in the Lord. It is a simple and straightforward word. How it is needed! This might be a shock, but children don’t always obey their parents. Seriously, God does promise that life will be easier if we obey our parents. Hassles at home will be fewer, and life will have a more peaceful and joyous quality to it. Generally, this will result in a longer and healthier life. Parents do not have the right to beat and mentally torture their children, but they have a God given responsibility for their upbringing in the Lord. Discipline your son while there is hope. And do not desire his death. There is proper timing for discipline. You will not be successful if you wait until your kids are problem teenagers. All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet for those who have been trained by it, received the yield of the peaceful fruit of righteousness. Whatever we do, however, it is our responsibility to nurture, train, and instruct our children in what it means to follow Jesus. The greatest gift we could ever give our children would be a desire to know Jesus.

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Twenty Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time – “A” – October 5, 2014

From the Pastor /

In today’s Gospel, the tenants in the vineyard, while they have not lost the ability to recognize the heir, have lost any interest in the importance of that fact. Jesus uses this parable to warn how the Savior, “the heir,” will be rejected by the very people who recognize Him. The Gospel combines two of the most important images for the people of God, vineyard and the temple, and shows how Christ is the fulfillment of them both.

How then do we avoid becoming like the wicked tenants of the vineyard? Surely it is by practicing virtues, both cardinal and theological. We can only do this if we maintain a humble attitude to the Lord and pray for His help. This is not always easy. Bad habits, temptations and weariness all interfere with out attempts to be faithful servants and good stewards of the gifts that God has given us. But Christ is always at hand in prayer and the sacraments to come to our help, to raise us up when we fall.

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Twenty Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time – “A” – September 28, 2014

From the Pastor /

Tax collectors are civil servants now, prostitutes are often victims more than wrongdoers; so maybe we could imagine Christ saying that the drug dealers, greedy bankers, or whatever group we feel morally superior to in our world today, make their way into the kingdom before us. The tax collectors and prostitutes listened to John the Baptist because they were aware that their professions were despised. They knew what they were. For the chief priests and elders, their position in society made them blind to themselves. They saw other people, like tax collectors and prostitutes, not as real persons, but as representatives of types of people – sinners. What attracted the social outcasts to St. John the Baptist was not so much what he said as the fact that someone was speaking to them at all. So they had at least the possibility to repent. The people who will not repent are those who do not even consider the possibility of repentance. Perhaps the shock of the crucifixion may have woken some priests up to their real need for repentance.

Prayer is preparation and prayer is repentance. Sooner or later we will be challenged by life. We can never say that we have fought our final battle, so we pray before and after each trial. The first son is not described as praying but he is very like the prodigal son in St. Luke who is said to have “entered into himself,” the phrase translated as “he came to his senses.” In prayer we enter into ourselves and discover that we are not what we think we are. We are told to pray constantly not to be put to the test, but we are also to pray after we have failed the test. The prayer of the apostles was the prayer of those who have failed their test. Yet they still had many trials, even after the resurrection.

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Twenty Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time – “A” – September 21, 2014

From the Pastor /

The parable of the laborers in the vineyard is one of the most difficult ones for a modern audience to appreciate. How can it be just that those who have worked for only an hour are paid the same as those who have labored through the heat of the day? It is the same sort of complaint we hear from people who have led exemplary lives only to be hit with ill health, economic woes and personal tragedies. “Why is God doing this to me? They ask. “It isn’t fair.” However, what Jesus wants to reveal, through His use of parables, is not what is fair and what isn’t but rather what enhances the presence of the kingdom of God and what blocks it. In today’s parable He uses the miserliness and envy of the workers. The kingdom of God is a place of forgiveness and generosity, not a place of greed and envy. The parables face us with a tough challenge. Can we understand and can we live in the way God lives?

For the Christian, envy and greed are not just addictions or illness. They create an obstacle in our way of understanding God and in our freedom to follow God’s guidance. Each of us is tested in different ways. We are asked to free ourselves, and to think that what another has is something I should have. It is true that such world view often emerges from our own sense of emptiness. Not having any sense of our fulfillment, we look elsewhere to fill the gap, but the gap is never filled. Instead we can look to the Lord and His teachings, for His grace and His guidance reveal a way forward in this labyrinth. We can do that, we can break the vicious circle of envy and greed and become fully alive in the kingdom of God.

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Solemnity – Brotherly Love – “A” – September 14, 2014

From the Pastor, PNCC /

Today’s Gospel story is the parable of the Good Samaritan, a story we’ve heard over and over. It’s a very familiar story about showing compassion even for people we may not want to treat well: a nice little story with a nice little moral, especially for those of us who like to do good deeds for the needy. The story certainly doesn’t offend our sensibilities; in fact, we tend to hear it with a satisfied ear, as if we believe we would surely do what the “Good” Samaritan did when he was moved by compassion to help the victim of highway robbery. At least, we’d like to think we would. In other words, we put ourselves in the place of the Samaritan, and it’s comfortable there. But let’s remember that there are two other audiences for it, besides us here today: there’s the group of people, including the lawyer, gathered around Jesus that day, presumably all or mostly Jewish people. Then there are the early Christians of Luke’s community who are trying to live their lives as followers of this Jesus, and they’re just as interested in being faithful and in knowing what that means for how they live their lives.

It’s not one of our own kind who saves the day – it’s the hated Samaritan, a guy who’s definitely on the outside of our community of care. They don’t worship like us, they don’t hate the same people we hate or love the same people we love, they don’t live where we live, and there’s no way they should provide the hero of the piece. The stomachs are churning by this time, and the sensibilities are definitely offended. A lot of hatred, of course, is religiously based and rooted in historical things like wars and other arguments. The Samaritan had probably been taught, from his side, to hate the Jews, too. And remember that he’s in their territory, and the robbers could still be hanging around, waiting for their next victim. In our aspirations for holiness, we may miss the heart of both the Good News and the Law. After all, the quest for holiness cannot violate God’s commands to Love.

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