5pm Mass on Sat.
8:30am Mass
12pm Mass
Homily #43
St. Joseph's Catholic Church, Vacaville, CA
Oct. 31, 2015 - Nov. 1, 2015
I.
U.S. Navy Reserve Lt.
Vincent Capadanno was mobilized to Vietnam in 1967. One day, in the middle of an intense battle, he
saw a hospital corpsman fatally shot on the ground. Even with injuries to himself, Capadanno ran to
help the fallen corpsman. And in the
process of rescuing him, Capadanno himself was shot multiple times… and was killed
in action.
Vincent Capadanno was a
Catholic priest. He was the chaplain
assigned to the 5th Marines which he considered his parish. He is one of five Catholic priestchaplains that
have been awarded the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest military honor.
While all service members
try to fulfill their duty, the Medal of Honor is conferred for a sacrifice that
is above and beyond the call of duty.
There is a difference
between (a) doing one’s duty versus (b) acting above and beyond the call of
duty. One is not required to
exceed one’s duty. The same difference
applies in our own spiritual lives,
too.
And this is the first
main point of reflection: There is a
difference between simply doing one’s spiritual duty versus going above
and beyond our spiritual duties.
Fr. Capodanno did not
need to lay down his life for the 5th Marines. But he did.
In
our spiritual lives, we do not just want to do the bare minimum of our holy Christian
faith – just out of mere duty. Rather,
we want to go above and beyond the
minimum of living our Christian faith.
This is heroic virtue. We must strive to be spiritual heroes that
make great sacrifices for the love of Jesus that may, at times, be costly even
to our own lives.
II.
Today, we celebrate the
Solemnity of All Saints. (Yesterday we
celebrated the Evening vigil of the Hallowed Ones or Hallow’s Eve.) Today’s solemnity reminds us that all of us are called to be great
saints in God’s kingdom! Notice I did
not say that we are called to be a saint.
You and I are called to be GREAT saints
in God’s Kingdom.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus
Himself is the model of perfection and holiness of all saints. He teaches us the Beatitudes from the Sermon
(or his homily) on the Mount.
Notice what St. Matthew
does. He presents Jesus as the new
Moses, the new Lawgiver.
-
Just as Moses went up a mountain to
receive the Ten Commandments, Jesus “went up the mountain” in the Sermon on the
Mount.
-
Then, just as a teacher sits with
authority, Jesus “sat down” to teach with authority.
-
And just as the Ten Commandments are a
series of teachings of the Law, Jesus gives us the New Law through the 8 beatitudes
– or 8 blessings – for us, His disciples.
And just we are called to
do our duty and keep the Ten Commandments, Christians
in the New Law of Christ are called to go above and beyond the call of duty and
even exceed the Ten Commandments. We
don’t want to do the bare minimum. Again,
we are called to be great saints.
We hear people in our
culture say, “I’m a nice person. I don’t
kill. I don’t do drugs. I don’t do this or I don’t do that.” The Christian reply to this is, “Okay, if you
don’t kill or steal or do this or that, then, what do you do?
Christ through the Beatitudes
show us how to be saints, not just nice people that don’t kill or don’t do this
or don’t do that. Blessed are the
humble, those who pursue righteousness, the merciful, the peacemakers,
etc.
St. Augustine said that
the Beatitudes are the (quote) “perfect standard of the Christian life” (end
quote). The Second Vatican Council, in
its Dogmatic Constitution on the Church called Lumen Gentium, taught that “all in the Church, whether they belong
to the hierarchy or are cared for by it, are called to holiness” (LG 39). This is called the “Universal Call to
Holiness.” Everyone, not just priests and nuns, is called to be a saint.
III.
But
we cannot become holy without God. We
need the Seven Sacraments of the holy Church. The first of these signs or sacraments starts
with baptism. This is the meaning of the
white robes that we heard in the First Reading.
It is written in the Word of God from the Book of Revelation, “Then one
of the elders spoke up and said to me, ‘Who are these wearing white robes, and
where did they come from? … He said to me, ‘These are the ones who have
survived the time of great distress; they have washed their robes and made them
white in the Blood of the Lamb”.
Our robes are our souls,
and our souls are made white, made pure in the Sacrament of Baptism. At the Rite of Baptism, we are called to keep
the white robe of our souls unstained until we see God at the end of our lives. In the Second Reading, St. John writes, “Everyone
who has this hope based on him makes himself pure, as he – God – is pure.”
Two other sacraments that
we should receive regularly are the Sacraments of Holy Eucharist – the Mass –
and the Sacrament of Reconciliation – going to Confession. We go to Confession when we need to have the
robes of our souls stained with sin washed away by the Blood of Jesus.
And just as Christ kept
the Law perfectly yet went above and beyond the Old Law, we too in our
spiritual lives should go above and beyond the bare minimum of living the
fullness of our holy Catholic faith.
Participating at Sunday
Mass every week (and Holy Days of Obligation) is just the bare minimum of a
dynamic Catholic life. Going to
Confession once a year is a minimum duty.
Let us go to Mass and Confession more frequently than the bare minimum.
IV.
Finally, our beloved Pope
Francis met with some bishops in Rome for a Synod on the Family. There, the Holy Father declared as saints the
first canonized married couple, the parents of St. Therese of Lisieux. Saints Louis and Zellie show us that married
people can and should become saints in their ordinary day-to-day family
life. (Zellie died of breast cancer at
age 45, and Louie lived well into his 90s raising girls by himself.) They were ordinary people living
extraordinary or heroic lives of faith.
In our own time where the
Church is experiencing distress and tribulation, Catholic families must not become
average families, but rather heroic families.
Christian family life must go
above and beyond the bare minimum and practice a deeper and more fervent
sacramental life if its spiritual life is to survive and grow. For us who are married, let us not just look
to saints that are married, like Louis and Zellie, but let us also ask
for their help, their intercession (just like if I ask you to pray for me).
We may not receive the
Medal of Honor like Fr. Vincent, but we should still live a heroic virtuous
life, like the many saints that have gone before us. So, in summary:
1.)
First, let us go above and beyond the
minimum duties of our faith.
2.)
Second, Jesus the model of all saints,
gives us the Seven Sacraments to become GREAT saints.
3.)
Third, in our time, Catholic families must
become heroic families today.
May Mary, the mother and
exemplar of all the saints, watch us, so that we will one day join the
multitude of saints in heaven, which no one could count, from every nation,
race, people and tongue, and cry out in a loud voice with the angels,
“Amen. Blessing and glory, wisdom and
thanksgiving, honor, power and might be to our God forever and ever. Amen.”
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