The Lord's descent into hell

 "What is happening? Today there is a great silence over the earth, a great silence, and stillness, a great silence because the King sleeps; the earth was in terror and was still, because God slept in the flesh and raised up those who were sleeping from the ages. God has died in the flesh, and the underworld has trembled.

Truly he goes to seek out our first parent like a lost sheep; he wishes to visit those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death. He goes to free the prisoner Adam and his fellow-prisoner Eve from their pains, he who is God, and Adam's son.

The Lord goes in to them holding his victorious weapon, his cross. When Adam, the first created man, sees him, he strikes his breast in terror and calls out to all: 'My Lord be with you all.' And Christ in reply says to Adam: ‘And with your spirit.’ And grasping his hand he raises him up, saying: ‘Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light.

‘I am your God, who for your sake became your son, who for you and your descendants now speak and command with authority those in prison: Come forth, and those in darkness: Have light, and those who sleep: Rise.

‘I command you: Awake, sleeper, I have not made you to be held a prisoner in the underworld. Arise from the dead; I am the life of the dead. Arise, O man, work of my hands, arise, you who were fashioned in my image. Rise, let us go hence; for you in me and I in you, together we are one undivided person.

‘For you, I your God became your son; for you, I the Master took on your form; that of slave; for you, I who am above the heavens came on earth and under the earth; for you, man, I became as a man without help, free among the dead; for you, who left a garden, I was handed over to Jews from a garden and crucified in a garden.

‘Look at the spittle on my face, which I received because of you, in order to restore you to that first divine inbreathing at creation. See the blows on my cheeks, which I accepted in order to refashion your distorted form to my own image.

'See the scourging of my back, which I accepted in order to disperse the load of your sins which was laid upon your back. See my hands nailed to the tree for a good purpose, for you, who stretched out your hand to the tree for an evil one.

`I slept on the cross and a sword pierced my side, for you, who slept in paradise and brought forth Eve from your side. My side healed the pain of your side; my sleep will release you from your sleep in Hades; my sword has checked the sword which was turned against you.

‘But arise, let us go hence. The enemy brought you out of the land of paradise; I will reinstate you, no longer in paradise, but on the throne of heaven. I denied you the tree of life, which was a figure, but now I myself am united to you, I who am life. I posted the cherubim to guard you as they would slaves; now I make the cherubim worship you as they would God.

"The cherubim throne has been prepared, the bearers are ready and waiting, the bridal chamber is in order, the food is provided, the everlasting houses and rooms are in readiness; the treasures of good things have been opened; the kingdom of heaven has been prepared before the ages."

A reading from an ancient homily for Holy Saturday

Sunday Homily - Mary, Mother of the Living

As promised, the text of the January 1st Homily:

Today we celebrate the motherhood of our Blessed Mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary.  The title of this feast, "Mary, Mother of God" is actually a theological doctrine, that goes all the way back to the year 431 at the Council of Ephesus, when our Blessed Mother was declared, "Mother of God".  It was really intended to say more about Jesus, the fact that Jesus was God, than it was to say something about Mary.  Nonetheless, being such an important feast of our Blessed Mother, I would like to focus my reflections on her this morning.  I don't know how many of you have had the opportunity to surf over to our diocesan website, admittedly it's not a very user-friendly website, but if you can navigate around, somewhere buried in there, is an explanation of our diocesan Coat of Arms, and our diocesan motto.  For those who don't know, our diocesan motto is Mater Viventium, "Mother of the Living" and this is another title given to our Blessed Mother, "Mother of the Living."  Certainly we know that she is the Mother of God, she is the Mother of Christ, she is Mother of the Church.  When our Lord gave her over to St. John as he hung on the Cross, she became the Mother of the Church, but that title is given to her as well, Mother of the Living.  It was given to her by St. Epiphanius (that's a $10 factoid there that you can impress your friends with, St. Epiphanius called Mary, "Mother of the Living").  That title was actually first used, in Genesis Chapter 3 to make reference to Eve, that Eve was the "Mother of the Living".  After all, she is the first woman, she is the mother of all humanity, but then Mary is also called the Mother of the Living, because she is often referred to as the "New Eve."  If we go back and take a look at that story in Genesis, we see that it was Eve who was the one who was first tempted by the serpant, it was Eve's disobedience that caused Adam to sin, to bring Original Sin into the world, to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  So just as Eve first was disobedient and led Adam into sin, so first Mary was obedient to God's plan, before our Lord's obedience in his sacrifice of himself on the Cross.  Christ is often referred to as the New Adam, because he revereses Adam's sin, and Mary the New Eve, because she reverses the disobedience of the first Eve.  As we know, Mary was obedient to God throughout her entire life, at every moment of her life she did God's will, she never committed a single sin throughout her entire life.  Her obedience was most important though, at that moment when the Angel appeared to her, and the Angel of the Lord told her that she would become the Mother of God.  Nevertheless, she still had the free choice, she could have said "no".  She could have said, "I don't want to be a part of it, I don't understand, I'm afraid, I can't do this" but of course she was perfectly obedient in all things, and so she did say "Yes, let it be done to me according to your word."  Through that act of obedience to God's will, she became the Mother of Christ, and she became the New Eve, the Mother of all the Living.  Her role as mother, of course, doesn't end with that, her role as mother continues.  She loves each and every one of us with a mother's love, she loves the whole world, each and every person with a mother's love, not just the members of her Son's body, the members of the Church.  So we are invited, we are encouraged to turn to her in our times of need.  Mary's intercession is certainly very powerful.  I myself have to confess being a bit of a late comer to Marian devotion, there was not much Marian devotion practiced at home when I was growing up, but I have come to discover in my life, on a few occasions turning to our Blessed Mother, that her intercession is indeed very, very powerful, and very effective.  It might be a very simplistic way to say it, but, if we have Mary on our side, then we cannot fail; that what seems almost impossible, suddenly becomes almost easy if we have our Blessed Mother on our side.  She wants to help us, she wants to show us that mother's love, that she has for each and every one of us, she wants us to turn to her, so she can lead us to her Son.  So as we begin this new year, 2012, we commend our Parish, our families, our friends, our Diocese, and indeed the whole world to the prayers and the intercession of our Blessed Mother; Mary, Mother of the God, Mary, Mother of the Living, that she might continue to show us a mother's love, that she might continue to intercede for us, that we might know the grace and power, and forgiveness and mercy of her Son.  Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us!

A New Year, A New Blog Feature

As we begin this new calendar year, I decided to add a new feature to the blog.  My Sunday homilies will now be available in audio (but since Blogger only allows videos not audio files, I'll be converting them to simple videos and posting them to my YouTube channel, then connecting it here to the blog).  For those who still prefer the printed word, the text of the homily will still appear on the blog.  God bless, and a Happy New Year to all!

Sunday Homily - The Spirit of Unity

The following is the text for my homily given this past Sunday at a Mass in the Extraordinary Form in St. Anne's, Kitchener:

Today we celebrate the glorious Feast of Pentecost, a day when we give our focus to the Holy Spirit, or the Holy Ghost, whichever you prefer to call Him.  So often it seems that the Holy Spirit is the forgotten member of the Holy Trinity.  It's on occasions such as this one that I'm always a little envious of our brethren in the East.  The Eastern Rites of the Catholic Church, and those in the Orthodox traditions generally have a much better developed theology of, and appreciation for the Holy Spirit, than those of us in the West.  We seem to put all of our focus onto Christ, and certainly it is fitting, since we are his followers, but the Holy Spirit accomplishes so much, but we only seem to remember him on Pentecost and at Confirmation time.

We can certainly take much time, say a great deal about the Holy Spirit, so I will have to confine my reflections today to just one area, and today I would like to reflect on the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Unity.  The cause of division after all is sin, and it is through the work of the Holy Spirit that we can achieve unity again, and I would like to look at three different areas, moving from the general, to the more specific.

In the reading from the book of Acts, we hear of the Apostles, who had been gathered in the upper room for nine days, in prayer, fearful of the Jewish authorities, suddenly going out to preach the message of Christ after receiving the Holy Spirit, and doing so in many different tongues, many different languages.  This hearkens back to the passage in the book of Genesis about the tower of Babel.  The many languages of humanity all brought about through human sin; sin causes division.  When travelling through the world, in order to communicate with our fellows, we need to find some way to overcome the language barrier, someway to translate.  Communication is difficult enough let alone trying to spread the faith of Christ and the Gospel message.  Through the power of the Spirit though, unity is restored, and indeed as the passage continues we hear that 3000 people were baptized that very day and became members of the Church.

It is often said that the greatest scandal in the Christian Church is the divisions within it.  So many thousands of different Christian denominations, how can we possibly proclaim the one truth of Christ when we are divided amongst ourselves.  For the past several decades, the Ecumenical movement has sought to bring about unity among Christians, but we often hear the old refrain, Ecumenism is not about making everyone Catholic again.  Well, I think our Holy Father, Pope Benedict would respectfully disagree.  After all we see the recent creation of the Anglican ordinariates to allow members of the Anglican Church to return to the Catholic Church while retaining some of the distinctiveness of their own liturgical traditions.  Quite recently too we saw a symbolic, but certainly a significant gesture, as our Holy Father was presented with a new Papal Tiara, by a group of Catholics and Orthodox Christians.  It is being called the Tiara of Christian Unity.  Catholics and Orthodox coming together to present the Holy Father with what is ultimately a sign of his authority as Successor of St. Peter.  We pray that the Holy Spirit continue to guide the work of Christian Unity and the efforts of the Holy Father to achieve it.

Turning a little more specific now, we can look at divisions even in our own personal relationships.  Once again, it must be said that divisions which come between us as persons have their origin in sin.  We can look at one specific example that is very prevalent in our own culture, that of divorce.  The statistics tell us that roughly 50% of marriages end in divorce, but that's the general number.  When we look at couples who share a faith, and practice that faith actively in their lives the number drops significantly.  Now, it's not possible to generalize in a homily about all of the specifics of human relationships, but the numbers point to something important, and that could very well be the work of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Unity, helping to overcome certain things that would otherwise lead to divorce.

Getting even more specific now, we can look within ourselves.  One of the consequences of Original Sin was a division within each one of us, as St. Paul reminds us, our Spirits thirst for the things of God, while our bodies and minds so often incline us to sin.  However, through the power of the Holy Spirit, through the grace we receive from him, through prayer, through the Sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation we are given the strength to fight against this division in ourselves.  Through the grace of the Holy Spirit we can turn our bodies and minds to the things of God.  Make no mistake, the division will continue to be there, at least until our souls are reunited with our glorified bodies in the resurrection, but the grace of the Holy Spirit can help us overcome our divisions, our inclinations to sin, and draw us to God.

So we pray that the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Unity may come among us, to help us to overcome sin and the divisions it creates; that He may give us true unity, in our world, in our Church, in our homes, and in ourselves.