Celebrated 4th Ord. Anniversary By Honoring Priests/Deacons Killed & Time w/Kids

Kingdom of God Is Like an Athlete in Training (Homily #136 on Father's Day)

(audio of Homily #136b - 10am)

(audio of Homily #136a - 8am)

When athletes train for boxing, martial arts, or basketball, we hear stories of their humble beginnings.  Bruce Lee lost many street fights; Manny Pacquiao came from extreme poverty before training in Manila, and Steph Curry was an overlooked recruit because he was considered too short even at a few inches above six feet.  Whether it’s Lee, Pacquiao or Curry, all three of them have one thing in common: The early seeds of their humble beginnings grew into a great tree of excellence that the world sees today.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus asked, “To what shall I compare the kingdom of God, or what parable can we use for it?”  Well… the Kingdom of God is like an athlete in training.  You and I are that athlete.  Just as these 3 figures grew from their small seeds, so too you and I spiritually train and grow in the game of life with God.

Our training started when the mustard seeds of faith was planted in the ground of our souls through Baptism.  Then, over time, we learned the basic rules of the game, such as boundaries, what we can or cannot do, and the rule book of God’s Commandments which we learned make us happy and help us love the game.

This seed grew into a strong trunk when we nourished our training with our First Holy Communion, and the Communions after that which produced many strong branches.  These branches rooted in love for God grew into serving and loving others.  The leaves of our merits and delicious fruits of joy followed.  And boy oh boy, it took a lot of discipline, didn’t it?!  As it is written in the First Reading from the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel, “It shall put forth branches, and bear fruit, and become a majestic cedar.  Birds of every kind shall dwell beneath it.” 

But sometimes, dear fellow spiritual athletes, we didn’t want to come to the heavenly training gym called “The Lord’s Gym of Sunday Mass” to exercise our muscles of faith.  And perhaps whenever we missed our Sunday-Mass-spiritual-workouts for only an hour, it later showed during the week because our spiritual muscles atrophied.  Perhaps the few birds of that once to us for spiritual help did not want to stay on our weak branches because we cannot give to other birds what we ourselves do not have.  Or maybe our powerful left boxing hook of personal prayer like the rosary or other personal prayers were not fully well-developed yet. 

On the other hand, we noticed that whenever we worked out frequently in “the Lord’s Gym of Sunday Mass,” this helped us little by little overcome those sloppy moves in the boxing ring of life.  In training, we also learned that we can’t always be on the spiritual defensive (just doing the bare minimum) and that if we are not progressing forward then we are regressing backwards. 

I mean, what if Bruce Lee just kept blocking and blocking and blocking without punching?  Then he would lose.  What if Pacquiao kept dodging and dodging and dodging without punching?  Then he would lose.  What if Curry just played defensively and didn’t shoot the ball, there he would lose. 

The point for Father’s Day is this: We must proclaim the Kingdom of God.  We cannot simply be reactionary or be passive waiting defensively to when God or the Church or our families are attacked— we will lose.  But, esp. dear fathers, we must be proactive and share the good news about the Kingdom of God in our own little “domestic churches”.  We are doing this right now by working out in “the Lord’s Gym” today at Mass to ask the Heavenly Father, the source of all fatherhood, to bless us, to heal our mistakes as fathers, to heal and forgive the “father wound” from our earthly fathers, and to pray for our fathers at Mass whether living or deceased.  

Some examples of being proactive in the game are reading Scripture, praying every day, and consecrating our families to the Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Immaculate Heart of Mary.  We must also trust in the Sacrament of Matrimony.  This is why we should be married in the Catholic Church for us Catholics.  We receive graces and help needed [for marriage and family according to God’s plan].  There’s a website listed in the parish bulletin called ForYour Marriage.org which will enrich marriages.  After my diaconate ordination, Deacon Bobby Peregrino told me, “The best thing you can do as a deacon isn’t homilies or assisting at the altar, the best thing you can do as a deacon is to bring your family to Mass.”

The Kingdom of God is like an athlete in training.  Whenever our pre-season game of life had a big loss with our sins, we quickly need to go back to the spiritual locker room of the Sacrament of Reconciliation for healing [PAUSE] and a good spiritual shower— to get back up when our chips are down during half-time.  And like good athletes, we get back up by verbally admitting our faulty plays with our priest-coach in Confession.  “Father Coach” encourages our downtrodden soul to make the 3-point upright moral life and not give up and quit the game [even when we’re down by 30 points].  And perhaps this season we didn’t win, but the next season [pause for effect] of Lent or Advent we will try again to win and do better. Perhaps we may yet make it to the semi-finals of overcoming 2 of the 3 habitual sins in our life that season (like avoiding that quick temper or avoiding that affair at work), so that our record moves from being zero for three to being two for three.

Finally, my dear fellow spiritual athletes, the seed of our training prepares us for the Championship Finals of our Judgment Day.  As Coach St. Paul wrote to Team Corinthians from today’s Second Reading, “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ.”  [I, as a father, will be accountable to God for my children on my Judgment Day.]  Here, esp. us fathers, we must not only be champion-saints ourselves, but we are called to help others in our families be holy champion-saints, too.  The birds of the sky that dwell in the cool shades of our Christian fatherly love are our very wives and kids and others in need of our fatherly role.  Let our children be the championship trophies; let our grandchildren and godchildren be our championship rings; not gold or silver, but flesh and blood with souls that are destined for Heaven.  Heaven!  Let us fight for their salvation!  Let us be their spiritual champions.  Let us train well in the Lord’s Gym.

The Kingdom of God is like an athlete in training.  The athlete is the smallest of seeds, but once it is sown, it springs up and becomes the largest of plants, so that the birds of the sky can dwell in its shade.  

[Happy Father’s Day!]  

Amen.

“The Kingdom of God is Like an Athlete in Training”

(Homily #136 w/Message for Fathers on Father’s Day)

By Deacon Dennis Purificacion

June 17, 2018

The Year That 3 Catubig Daughters Had 3 Boys (Pre-Baptism Moment @ Dominican Parish & Park Baby Shower)

First Holy Communion of My Daughter, Mariana Mahal (w/Homily #135 for Solemnity of Sacred Heart of Jesus & Msg. For My Daughter)

Mariana receives her First Communion from her deacon-dad.

(photo by my mom)

(video of Mariana's First Holy Communion by C. Ramos)

Thank you, Father Resti!!!

Homily #135

In the movie “The Passion of the Christ,” after a Roman solider took his lance (or spear) and pierced the side of Jesus on the Cross, this unnamed soldier touched his eye and fell on his knees.  According to a popular legend, this soldier was St. Longinus.  He touched his eye because he was blind in that eye, and his eye was healed when the blood and water that gushed out of Jesus’s heart touched it.  He was immediately converted, and some have said that he was the one who said, “Truly this was the Son of God.”  Legend continues that he was eventually baptized, later ordained a deacon, and died a martyr by beheading.

Today’s Gospel from John 19 describes the meek, humble, sorrowful and broken Heart of Christ that loved us all the way to his death on the Cross.  The prolific St. John Chrysostom wrote about today’s Gospel, QUOTE “Beloved, do not pass over this mystery without thought; it has yet another hidden meaning…”  END QUOTE St. John Chrysostom the Golden Mouth said that the water and blood that flowed from Jesus’s side represent Baptism and the Eucharist.  The waters of Baptism and the Blood of Christ that we drink are the life of the Church.  In today’s Responsorial Psalm we sing, “You will draw water joyfully from the springs of salvation.”  The side of Christ, his pierced, Heart are the springs of salvation!  It was from Jesus’s side, from his pierced broken Heart, that the Church his Bride was fashioned.  It was here at the foot of the Cross that she shares and participates equally in the mission of the Redeemer, even to the point of the Church being a type of Co-Redeemer or a Co-Redemptrix.  The two are one flesh. 

Just as God took the rib from the side of Adam as he was asleep and fashioned Eve, his equal and his beloved bride, bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, so too God took the pierced side of the Second Adam as he slept the sleep of death on the Cross and fashioned the Second Eve from his side.  The Second Eve, the Church, shares equally in the mission of Redeemer.  This is the correct sense of sub-missio in Latin—to be under the mission of the Redeemer, the Church is sub-missive to Christ’s mission to die for the world.  She too will undergo her passion in a death like his.  Below the foot of the Cross was the Second Eve, Mary, which Vatican II called an icon of the Church, in her perfection participating once again in the salvation of the world.  It was Mary who said in “The Passion of the Christ” to her Son, “Son, let me die with you” because her perfect Heart was so united to Jesus’s sacred heart that she shared in his sufferings and death.  As Simeon predicted in the Presentation at the Temple, “And a sword shall pierce your Heart.”  This pure and immaculate Heart, this Heart of the Theotokos which we shall celebrate tomorrow, is inseparable to the Heart of her Son.  They are the Twin Hearts of Jesus and Mary.  

Mary, and thus the whole Church, you and me through the springs of salvation, baptism, share in the passion of Jesus.  All our labors, sufferings, and hardships endured for love of God, all our labors to promote consecration to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the 12 promises of Jesus and the Nine First Fridays and consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, are so joined and united to Jesus that you and I today participate in our time in the salvation of souls in some mystical way as the Mystical Body of Christ.  As St. Paul wrote in today’s Second Reading to the Ephesians that the plan of the mystery was hidden in ages past but the “manifold wisdom of God is now made through the Church”.  Just as Jesus laid down his Heart for his Bride, so too we the Beloved Bride lay down our hearts for Him, our Beloved!

Finally, this love of God the Father for his daughter, the Church, is reflected in the First Reading from the Book of the Prophet Hosea.  “I fostered them like one who raises an infant to his cheeks.  Yet though I stooped down to feed my child, they did not know that I was their healer.”  As a homeschooling family, I too will have the joy of feeding my child, my daughter, Mariana Mahal, with the blood and water that gushed out of the Heart of Christ for the first time in her First Holy Communion.  Today, on this solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Mariana, may your heart remember how your father fed you too with the Heart of Christ.  In a few moments, my daughter, you too after much preparation will share in the adorable Sacrament of the Altar where Jesus Christ will forever be the Bridegroom of your soul.  

Your mom, Tove Ann, and I, your earthly father, with the blessing of the spiritual father of our parish, Fr. Resti, have prepared you for this day in many ways.  Some of those ways involved not just teaching you your daily Catechism which we did through the Faith & Life Series and the St. Joseph’s Catechism for First Communion, and not just in having you memorize your 10 Commandments or memorize your Act of Contrition for your First Penance, but it also involved your attending daily Mass as a family over the years with us, to our family going to devotional Confession every week or so, to our daily family rosary which you frequently lead, to daily spiritual reading and mental prayer, esp. the Bible, to our enthronement of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and our consecrating you to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, to teaching you the virtues in our parish, which we sacrificially serve and every day in our domestic church family, where forgiveness is learned and what St. John Paul the Great calls the “school of love.”  You who are named after the theological virtue of love, Mahal, our message to you is this: Be a great saint!  Don’t just be a saint, but be a great saint!  

May the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus be adored and loved in all the tabernacles of the world to the end of time.  Amen.

Golden State Warriors Championship Rings & the Holy Eucharist at Sunday Mass (Homily #134 for the Solemnity of Corpus Christi)

(audio recording Sun., 5pm Mass)

Since 2015, the two National Basketball Association (NBA) teams that have fiercely competed in the national Championship Finals are the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Golden State Warriors.  The Warriors have won twice against the Cavaliers and plan to win again this year.

With their victory, players, coaches and managers receive a prestigious NBA Championship Ring.  The rings are either gold or silver with the team name and year of victory, and they are made from the most precious metals the earth can produce.

As often as a player would wear their well-earned Championship Rings, they remember all that was involved leading up to the final victory— with all the ups and downs, games lost and games won, and the hardship and sacrifice involved.  To use the words of Steph Curry, QUOTE “I’m sure you wanna remember the moments and that’s a good way to do it: by looking down and seeing what the ring represents.”  END QUOTE

In a sense, just the NBA Championship Ring brings the past, present and future glory of victory on the court, so too is the Holy Eucharist that we receive at Sunday Mass a re-presentation today of the one sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross.  All the memories, feelings, passion, death and glorious Resurrection are not just vague moment in the past, but rather the past is made present – it is re-presented – when the priest consecrates humblest elements of bread and wine produced by the earth.

On Holy Thursday, the night before Jesus was betrayed, Jesus gave us a way to remember His great love on the Cross.  He instituted the Holy Eucharist.  The Last Supper was the First Mass.  But to have the Mass, you need to have priests first.  This is why Jesus consecrated his Twelve Apostles the new high priests of the New and Everlasting Covenant on Holy Thursday as well.

The Eucharist is not the Old and Temporary Covenant that we see in the First Reading when Moses took the blood of animals and sprinkled it on the people, but rather it is the New and Everlasting Covenant, where the Blood of the Lamb, Jesus who is both Priest and Victim, is offered to the Eternal Father as a sacrifice for our sins.

The word amnesia means someone who forgets.  But the Greek word “anamnesis” means to remember.  Anamnesis.  We remember what God has done for us.  Remember that God brought his people out of slavery in Egypt and gave them bread from heaven.  Remember that the blood of the lamb sprinkled on the Hebrew door posts saved the firstborn from the Angel of Death.  Remember the Bread that was kept in the Ark of the Covenant, the Tabernacle, and eventually placed in the Temple in Jerusalem.

When a validly ordained Catholic priest of the New Law of love pronounces the words of institution over ordinary bread, “This is my body” the bread is no longer bread, but it is truly, literally, physically, and really Jesus’s body.  The Eucharist IS Jesus!  The priest does not say, “This is a symbol of my body” (as the Protestants believe it is only a mere symbol but Catholics do not believe it is a symbol), but “This IS my body.”  My 5 senses tell me it is bread, but my Faith tells me it is the Body of Jesus.  It may look like bread, smell like bread, sound like bread, feel like bread, and taste like bread, but it is NOT bread.  The substance of the bread changes into Jesus’ body and blood.  It is the Real Presence of Jesus in a sacramental way.  In Heaven, we will not need the sacraments anymore because we will be with Jesus.

If Jesus were to walk to this ambo and take this piece of paper and say, “This is not a piece of paper.  This is a BMW car,” then I will say, “Amen.  This is a BMW car.”  Why?  Because Jesus who is God and is all truth does not lie.  In the hymn written by St. Thomas Aquinas, Adoro Te Devote, one of my favorite lines is “What God’s Son has told me / Take for truth I do / Truth Himself Speaks Truly, or there’s nothing true.”  I will believe what Jesus says that bread is his Body.

So what does this mean?  Jesus who gave this to you and me doesn’t just ask us – he commands us – Do this in memory of me.  This is why we must be resolved to attend weekly Sunday Mass.  Sunday Mass is the center of an authentic Catholic life.  Vatican II said that the life of the Church flows from the Eucharist and everything goes to the Eucharist.  The Eucharist is the center.  Without the Eucharist, the Church would not exist and we would forget what Jesus did on the Cross.  Therefore, dear brothers and sisters, let us plan our vacations, travel, work, recreation, and sports activities so that it does not interfere with Sunday Mass.

And not only are we called to attend Sunday Mass, we are called to receive the Holy Communion in the state of grace.  One should not receive in the state of mortal sin.  Get a blessing instead by crossing your arms.  Did you know that if you willingly miss Sunday Mass on purpose, you have to go to Confession first and confess it before receiving Holy Communion the following Sunday?  Unless there is “grave cause” to miss Sunday Mass, like illness, child care, cannot get out of work, necessary travel, etc., we should attend Sunday Mass and Holy Days of Obligation which have the same weight as a Sunday Mass.  When viewed from the point of view of doing it for love of God, then Sunday Mass makes sense.  When someone we love is dying and they have a dying request, we honor it.  Jesus’s last will and testament was for us to receive his body and blood.  Sunday Mass fulfills this command of love from our Beloved.

When we find it difficult to attend Mass, let us turn to the words of Pope St. John Paul the Great who wrote in his encyclical letter Ecclesia de Eucharistia that Mary is the Woman of the Eucharist.  She will help us love the Eucharist.  Just as Mary gave her fiat to carry Jesus inside her, so too when we receive the Eucharistic Jesus we have Jesus living in our souls.  In closing let us like her love the Eucharistic Jesus.  And let us, to use the words of today’s Responsorial Psalm, let us take up the cup of salvation and call upon the name of the Lord.  Amen.

“Golden State Warrior Rings & the Holy Eucharist at Sunday Mass” (Homily #134 for the Solemnity of Corpus Christi)

By Deacon Dennis Purificacion