Families Save the World

Now, more than ever, we need the Feast of the Holy Family. When we look out at the world around us, the family is not much respected. Families are broken and shattered by the tragedy of divorce. We see families whose members prefer to spend time with screens over each other. We see the attempted redefinition and unmooring of the family from the structure God gave it at the dawn of creation. All of this is a result of sin in the world. Satan hates the family, because it is through the family that salvation comes into the world. If we look at salvation history, we see that this is true.

The family comes at the very dawn of creation: Adam and Eve, our first parents, were wedded as husband and wife in their original innocence. God is a communion of Three Divine Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Adam and Eve, being the pinnacle of God’s material creation, mirrored that communion of love here on earth. Together, they were given the gift of communion with God.  Satan hated them so very much that he deceived them and tempted them into the original sin that shattered the order of the entire universe. The breakdown of our families, even now, is a tragedy of universal order, because it is in the family where we are supposed to learn to love one another as God loves himself and as God loves us. When this love is violated, it has universal consequences.

Abraham, our Father in Faith, and his beloved wife Sarah did not receive the gift of a Son until their old age. They show us that the family must always be oriented to the worship of Almighty God. When they received the gift of their son Isaac, they recognized him to be a gift from God. We all remember the nearly tragic sacrifice Abraham was called to make of his son Isaac. It was not Abraham’s son that God desired, but his faith to follow God wherever he might lead. From Isaac, God promised to bless Abraham with descendants as numerous as the stars. What Abraham did not know was that one of these descendants would be the Son of God himself, Jesus, the Christ.

We see this pattern of salvation through the family or utter disaster through the breakdown of the family play out again and again. Joseph, the son of Jacob who was sold into slavery in Egypt, saved the entire family of Israel by bringing them to Egypt in time of famine. King David, while extraordinarily successful and victorious in uniting Israel, wrought destruction on Israel and himself by violating the family of Uriah. David’s wanton violation of what a family ought to be led to infighting amongst his children who, in some cases, slaughtered one another outright. David’s broken family led to the breaking of the 12 tribes of Israel: the original covenant family was shattered.

It would not be until that quiet night in Bethlehem when the family would be restored to its original glory. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph provide an antidote to the ails of the family. Theirs is a wholly pure and chaste love for one another, one which transcends sin. The entire Holy Family was to be a light to all of the world of the glory of the family. Jesus spent 30 years with his mother and foster-father before beginning his public ministry. God himself spent 30 years obedient to his earthly parents, honoring them and caring for them. His first public miracle was at the celebration of the establishment of a new family: the wedding at Cana. His final act from the Cross before he expired was to establish a new covenant family: giving John to Mary as her son. While there were many reasons for this, one was undoubtedly that this final act of filial reverence would ensure John would honor and care for his mother.

We must care for our families. Husbands: love your wives. Wives: love your husbands. Parents: love, discipline, and teach your children. Children: obey and honor your parents now, and care for them in their old age. Above all, love God, who will bring your closer together. If we do these things, our families will bring peace and redemption to the entire world, because the Holy Family will be incarnated in this world again: shining out to all nations through our families.

Today’s Readings:
December 27, 2020
Feast of the Holy Family, Year B
Sirach 3:2-6, 12-14; Psalm 105; Hebrews 11:8, 11-12, 17-19; Luke 2:22-40

Humility and the Heavenly Banquet

In our Gospel today, Jesus gives what could be perceived as a lesson in social etiquette, but it is so much more than that.

Homily for the 22nd Sunday of Ordinary Time, Liturgical Year C, given at 9AM on September 1, 2019. 

Full homily: https://mattsiegman.com/2019/08/humility-and-the-heavenly-banquet/

Humility and the Heavenly Banquet

Audio recording of homily from 9am on September 1, 2019.

Some weekends, our Holy Mother, the Church, makes the theme tying the readings together very obvious. This is one of those weekends. So, let’s talk about humility!

In our Gospel today, Jesus gives what could be perceived as a lesson in social etiquette, but it is so much more than that. This wedding banquet of which our Lord speaks is not some abstract thing. We are all invited to this wedding banquet: Heaven. In Heaven, our souls will be united with God in a way completely unfathomable by us while we live in this world. While we remain ourselves, we will mystically be united with God in eternal bliss and happiness at this wedding banquet. The eternal wedding banquet in Heaven is that place where God brings all of us back to himself, so that we can share in our Creator’s joy.

“What does this have to do with humility?” you might ask. Jesus warns us against overestimating our place at this banquet. He wants us to know our place before the host of the wedding banquet. When we look at the bigger picture, Jesus is telling us that it is absolutely critical to know where we stand before God. If we overestimate where we stand in relation to our Lord and God, we run the truly horrifying risk of being asked to move to a different place at the table. When we look at the rest of this story in Luke—we only read about half of Luke’s account of this parable—or consider Matthew’s recounting of this same teaching, we find that there are even worse consequences if we overestimate our standing with God. If we refuse to honor this invitation to the Heavenly banquet or if we come without having attempted to prepare ourselves, we may be thrown out into the streets, where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth. Jesus is telling us that it is much better to underestimate ourselves in relation with God, to not take our relationship with him for granted, to always continue working on that relationship, so that when we do arrive at our eternal judgment and reward, God surprises us by moving us to a higher seat. Humility is not allowing other people to walk all over us. Humility is not saying “yes” to every request made of us. Humility is properly understanding our worth. Our worth comes from two things and only two things: the fact that we are adopted sons and daughters of our God who created us, and our relationship with God. Nothing else matters.

Jesus gives us a fascinating example to help us understand humility today. He tells us that when we hold a banquet, we should invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind, because these people cannot repay us. At one level, Jesus is being straightforward and telling us exactly what to do here. Caring for these people is something we all must do, but Jesus never speaks on just one level. As I prayed with this passage, God revealed, perhaps, the most humbling aspect of this Gospel passage. Jesus is asking us to do exactly what God does with us. God has invited all of us to his heavenly banquet, knowing that we cannot ever repay him. We are all the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. We are poor in our faith. We are all crippled by original sin. We are lame, unable to walk without much difficulty on the path God asks us to follow. We are all blind to the spiritual reality all around us every day.

Fresco of the Heavenly Jerusalem from 1580.
Fresco of the Heavenly Jerusalem, depicting Heaven as a great banquet. Painted in 1580 at Annunciation Cathedral, Russia.

Despite all of this, God invites us to his wedding banquet. To our wedding banquet with Him. Will we accept his invitation? Will we prepare ourselves for the eternal wedding banquet by cleansing ourselves of the grime of sin and putting on the garments of faith and good works? Will we pray to God and ask him to grow our faith and hope in him so that we have the courage to walk the narrow path which leads to this great banquet? Will we take an honest look at ourselves and our relationship with God and allow him to show us those areas where we need to grow closer to him?

May we all ask God for true humility, in hopes that one day we might join him in eternal bliss at the Heavenly banquet.

Today’s Readings:
22nd Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year C
September 1, 2019
Sirach 3:17-18, 20, 28-29; Psalm 68; Hebrews 12:18-19, 22-24a; Lk 14:1, 7-14

God’s Discipline

We cannot enter the wide gate, we must do the hard thing and strive for the narrow gate. “Whom the Lord loves, he disciplines.” This is not because God wants to see us suffer: when we suffer, God suffers with us.

21st Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year C, given August 25, 2019.

Full homily: https://mattsiegman.com/2019/08/gods-discipline/

We Must Set the Earth on Fire!

Today we hear Jesus say, “I have come to set the earth on fire!” How can we respond to this calling?

Homily for the 20th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Liturgical Year C, given at 9AM on August 18, 2019

Full homily: https://mattsiegman.com/2019/08/we-must-set-the-earth-on-fire/

God’s Discipline

Recording of this homily from 6:30AM on August 25th , 2019.

Thus says the Lord: “I will send fugitives to the nations […] and they shall proclaim my glory among the nations. They shall bring all your brothers and sisters from all the nations as an offering to the Lord.” The Lord is telling us through the prophet Isaiah about the New Creation at the end of time, where God will gather all of his children to himself. This hopeful passage tells us that even in the days before Jesus was born, he intended to save all of us. There is something a little odd about it though. He says that he will send fugitives. Why fugitives? What’s that about?

It is as if God’s messengers will not be welcome in the world. It is as if they will have to sneak past the masters of the world to proclaim his Good News to all humanity. If you think about it, the words of the prophet are exactly right. The evil one, Satan, is constantly trying to distract us from God. He is constantly trying to steal our soul from God. He shows us the wide and easy gate through which we might travel, knowing that we must instead strive for the narrow gate. This is not because the devil cares about us and wants us to have an easy life: the devil hates us. If we take his offer and follow the wide, easy gate now, we will pay for it for eternity.

Instead, we must do the hard thing. We must remember the teaching from Hebrews: “whom the Lord loves, he disciplines.” This is not because God wants to see us suffer. When I was growing up, I remember my parents saying that punishing us hurt them more than us. At the time I thought it was nonsense, but as I’ve grown older, I understand what they were saying. They were being forced to inflict some sort of suffering on this child whom they loved—me, in many cases—in order to help their child learn how to behave and be a normally functioning human being. If that was true for my parents, imagine how true it is for God! God loves us more than any human being is capable of loving. He doesn’t want to see us suffer. It actually hurts God to see us suffer. Let that sink in for a moment. When we suffer, God suffers with us. He wants nothing more than for us to be healed. In fact, He could cure all of our pains and sweep away all of our sufferings in an instant. But he doesn’t. Why?

Now that really is the question, isn’t it? Why does God allow suffering? Why does God allow terrible things to happen to me, to people I care about, or just to people ever? This is the question that has, tragically, led so many to leave our faith, because they don’t get an answer that satisfies them. For many, the only answer is that God must hate us and enjoy watching us suffer. As I just finished explaining, nothing could be further from the truth. God doesn’t want us to suffer, but if he didn’t let us endure these sufferings, we wouldn’t be able to learn. The Letter to the Hebrews teaches us that “all discipline seems a cause not for joy but for pain, yet later it brings the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who are trained by it.” Brothers and sisters, without enduring some suffering, we cannot grow strong in righteousness. Without that growth, we will not have the strength Jesus tells us that we will need to enter the narrow gate. We stay strong and courageous through our sufferings so that God can “perfect and sustain us” (Prayer after Communion) through these trials. Through these trials, we learn to fix our hearts “on that place where true gladness is found,” (Collect) Heaven.

These trials are where we learn to show courageous strength which allows us to endure trails and persecutions for the Lord. This is what the saints did: St. Monica prayed for over 2 decades before her son Augustine—who would become a doctor of the Church—finally converted; St. Maximilian Kolbe and Fr. Emil Kapaun stared at evil in the face and brought hope to those around them, which saved many from death; St. John Paul II suffered his whole life, first enduring the Nazi occupation of Poland, later from an assassination attempt—after which he had the courage to forgive the man who shot him, and finally through Parkinson’s disease; Saint Mother Teresa, who struggled through spiritual darkness for 40+ years. This is heroic courage. In our prayers let us offer our sufferings to the Lord who suffers right along with us, and let us ask him to give us courage to follow him on the narrow path to eternal life.

Note: Saint Pope John Paul II wrote one of the most profound and moving letters on suffering I have ever read, On the Christian Meaning of Human Suffering. If you have questions or just need something to uplift your soul, I’d encourage you to read it.

Today’s Readings:
21st Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year C
August 25, 2019
Isaiah 66:18-21; Psalm 117; Hebrews 12:5-7, 11-13; Luke 13:22-30

We Must Set the Earth on Fire!

Audio recording of this homily, from 9AM on August 18, 2019

Today we hear Jesus say, “I have come to set the earth on fire!” and “Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.” This is not subtle language. This is not the “I’m fine, You’re fine, We’re all OK, let’s just be nice to each other” language that so many attribute to Jesus. The fact that we find these lines in St. Luke’s Gospel makes them even more jarring: Luke is often considered the most merciful and joyful of the Gospel writers. So how can we understand these jarring lines of the Gospel? What is Jesus demanding of us when he wants the world set afire? Does he really want divided families?

After Jesus speaks of fire, he immediately refers to a baptism. This is most certainly a reference to the Pentecost, where thousands were added to the Church and tongues of fire appeared above their heads. This is the fire Jesus wishes were here: the fire of the Spirit, living within each of us. We were baptized with much more than just water. No, we were baptized with the divine fire of love and life proceeding forth from the Holy Spirit into our hearts. This divine fire comes forth from God; it lives within us; and, it transforms us. Until we are baptized with this fire of the Spirit, Jesus is in anguish. Other translations say that he is constrained. Jesus needs us to burn with his fire to complete his mission of salvation from sin and death.

In the book of Revelation, the Holy Spirit says to the church in Laodicea (wherever that is…), “because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.” Brothers and sister, we cannot be lukewarm in our faith and in our lives. We must be fire. Not only must we be fire, but we must set the world on fire with God’s love. To become that fire, we must, as the letter to the Hebrews tells us, “rid ourselves of every burden and sin that clings to us.” Simply put: We cannot deny the teachings of the church to those around us. We cannot live our lives contrary to those same teachings. We have to be honest with ourselves about this. So many of us, myself included, tell ourselves little lies, like “this is just a tiny sin, it’s OK,” or, “I don’t like this Church teaching, so I’m going to pretend not to know it,” or, “I think the Church is wrong, so I don’t have to follow this.” These thoughts are the work of Satan, the father of lies. He wants to turn us against God, against our own well being, against everything it means to be a child of God, and against that fire inside of us that we were entrusted with at our baptisms. He wants us to fail at “running the race that lies before us” we are called to run.

An image of Jesus depicting his Sacred Heart, the Crown of Thorns, and the marks of the Crucifixion
Notice how Jesus’s Sacred Heart is on fire with love for us, despite his suffering.

This race is not an easy one. In it, we must be exemplars of the faith to those around us. We must be willing to suffer, as the prophet Jeremiah did in today’s first reading. God had instructed Jeremiah to tell the king of Jerusalem to surrender the city, which was under seige by the Babylonians. The prophecy did not go over well, so he was thrown into a cistern. A cistern, if you’ve never seen one, is deep and pretty much impossible to climb out of. This was, basically, a death sentence for Jeremiah. He knew that going in, and was willing to risk his life to proclaim God’s message. In the United States of America, we may not have to risk our lives for God, but we may be asked to risk other things. If God asks us to stand up for him, it could cost us a career, money, friends, or sometimes even family. The devil is the one who sows this pain and division. The evil one is the reason families turn against one another, father against son, daughter against mother. He is behind the sin that lives in the world today, and sadly, too many people have helped him establish structure where sin can continue to grow and flourish.

When Christ says he came to establish division, it is not because he wants to break up families. It is not because he has only invited some of us to join him in Heaven. The divisions exist because Christ has called us to join his fight against the forces of evil and darkness. We can’t stay on the sidelines in this fight: we must pick a side. Do we fight for everything that is good and right and virtuous, for God himself? Or do we fight for the evil one, the father of lies, who desires our downfall?

One outstanding example of a Christian who stared evil in the face and said, “no,” was St. Maximilian Kolbe. During World War II, he was arrested by the Nazis and sent to Auschwitz. After a prisoner escaped that horrible place, the Nazis chose ten people at random to execute. One man began to weep, and begged to be spared. St. Maximilian Kolbe saw this, and walked up to the commander—which should have gotten him shot on sight—and said, “I will take his place.” The commander replied, “who are you?” St. Maximilian Kolbe replied, “a Catholic priest.” The ten men were locked in a room to starve to death. St. Maximilian Kolbe led them in prayer and song. St. Maximilian Kolbe was the last to die. In fact, it took him so long, the Nazis ended up giving him a lethal injection. This man stared evil in the face and won. Before all this happened, St. Maximilian Kolbe wrote that, “the value of any [community] depends only and absolutely on our life of prayer, on our interior life, on our personal closeness to the Immaculate [i.e., Mary] and, through her, to the Heart of Jesus.”

Our prayer life must bring us always closer to Jesus, and the surest route is through Mary. It is what allowed St. Maximilian Kolbe and all the saints to stand up to evil. Read the story of any saint—of Fr. Emil Kapaun, of St. Augustine, of St. Francis of Assisi, of St. Thomas Aquinas, of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, of St. Catherine of Siena, or any of those Saints we hear in the first Eucharistic Prayer—and you will find that they all begin with prayer.

“I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing.”

Today’s Readings:
20th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year C
August 18, 2019
Jeremiah 38:4-6, 8-10; Psalm 40; Hebrews 12:1-4; Luke 12:49-53