ARE YOU KNOWN BY YOUR LOVE?
May 19, 2019.
Fr. Bosco Padamattumma

When we come to John 13-17, we come to a text that is unique because that entire
sweeping section of John’s Gospel takes place on one night. One night. It is Thursday
night of Passion Week. It is the night before He is crucified. We began today’s Gospel
with the word “when He had gone out” that is Christ opens this talk when Judas has
gone out by essentially focusing on His own glory to betray the Lord. So, whatever He
gave to them that evening, He gave to us, and to all believers before us, and after us. It is
the legacy of Jesus. It is His final will and testament to His own.

What marks a true believer is something that happens in the heart. We are known by
our character, by our affection, by the things that are important to us, precious to us. In
a word, we are known by what we love. All the fruit of the Spirit that we’re familiar
with  love, joy, peace, gentleness, long suffering, patience and self-control those are all
attitudes, dominating attitudes that flow out of love. We all know from experience and
from what we’ve read that the last words of dying people are usually a pretty good
indication of what’s in their hearts. There are no words that can come even close to the
promises that our Lord gives. The purest mind, the purest heart, the grandest capacity
to love, divine love pours out its affections in a series of promises to every
believer.  There are no words that could match these. They are at once sweet and
powerful. They are calm and yet urgent. They are supercharged with divine passion and
yet tender with concern, and everything is bathed in this massive expression of divine
love.

Now, we all know verse 36.  “By this, by our love, all men will know that you are My
disciples if you have love for one another.” We are to be known by our love. We are to be
marked by our love. We can be known for our doctrine. We can be known for our
theology. That is what we believe. But what we believe is supposed to transform our lives
so that the final test of who we are is how we live. People don’t want to say anything
against Islam because they’re afraid. People will say anything against Christianity
because they’re not afraid. What they get back from us is love. What they get back from
us is forgiveness. What marks Christianity is our love, and that makes us vulnerable to
all the animosity and the hate because there’s no fear of retaliation. When we love it is
extended even to our enemies. That is the command we follow.

But I want you to look in the passage I read this morning, verses 31-35, at the directions
this love takes, into three ways. First of all, we are marked by love for our Lord’s glory.
Love for our Lord that seeks His glory. Secondly, we are marked by love for our brothers’

well-being. And thirdly, we are marked by loving loyalty, personal loyalty and to prove
his love personally by being loyal and faithful.  

How do I know I’m a genuine believer? It’s about love and where your love goes, where
your love is directed, where your love is focused and how consistent and faithful your
love is even when we do good to others. A believer’s primary preoccupation should be
that the Lord be exalted. St. Paul tells us, “Whatever you do,” 1 Corinthians 10:31,
“whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do it all to the glory of God.” Throughout
Scripture, we are told to glorify God because He has loved us first. He gave his life for us
we are loving him back when we glorify God. When the epistles were written by these
Christians, these doxologies were more than the praise of their lips or the praise of their
pen. It is how their heart cried that their Lord be glorified. Look at the words of St. Peter
when Peter was preaching in Acts 3:13, “The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God
of our fathers has glorified His servant, Jesus. The one whom you delivered and
disowned in the presence of Pilate when he had decided to release Him. But you
disowned the Holy and Righteous One and asked for a murderer to be granted to
you, and put to death the Prince of life, whom God raised from the dead.” Again Paul
says in 1 Timothy 1, “Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be
honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.” Dear brothers and sisters, let the love and the
desire to glorify the Lord be the driving force behind every activity that we do. Through
our Love the world may know that we are Christians.

DO YOU KNOW THE MASTERS VOICE?
May 12, 2019.
Fr. Bosco Padamattumma

John chapter 10 is a turning point, as you know, in John’s history.  This is the chapter that records the last account  that John gives of the public ministry of Jesus  because John wants  to make sure nothing is left unclear in terms of the claims by Christ that Jesus and His Father are One.   This is a summary of what he states in chapter 20 verse 31. “These have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah,  the Son of God, and that believing,  you may have life in His name.”  When Jesus said I and the Father are one. “The Jews picked up stones again to stone Him.” Jesus answered them, “I showed you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you stoning Me?”  The Jews answered Him, “For a good work we do not stone You, but for blasphemy; and because You, being a man, make Yourself out to be God.” They knew exactly what He was claiming. In verse 36, “You are blaspheming.” Are you accusing Me of that? “Because I said I am the Son of God? If I do not do the works of My Father, do not believe Me.”

 Here again, we have the summary of John’s Gospel: to make clear the claim of Jesus to be God, He possesses the very nature and essence of God, and therefore legitimately calls Himself the Son of God, one who bears the same nature, and He proves it by His works. He was claiming unity of essence,  unity of nature. That’s why they called Him a blasphemer, a man telling them He was God. So Jesus, though fully man, was also fully God, the second person of the Holy Trinity. There is one nature, one essence, but three distinct persons.   God the  Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. He has the title ‘God the Son’, or the ‘Son of God’.
Just as the Old Testament prophecy of Isaiah had predicted His rejection, the prophet predicts that when the Messiah comes,  people won’t believe. Isaiah goes on to say we esteemed Him not. We gave Him no honor.  We did not see Him as our Messiah. That rejection still exists to this very day among Jewish people. They knew the truth about the true and living God, the one God, the God who was creator, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of Moses and Abraham, and David. They knew about that God. But when He sent His Savior to redeem them, they rejected Him.
But as this chapter closes out, John’s short history of Jesus’ public ministry culminates in the same kind of anger and hostility against Jesus that we have seen all the way through His ministry. The more He says, the more He makes His claim. The more He demonstrates that it’s a true claim, the harder their hearts become. So at the end of the chapter, when He goes away beyond the Jordan, verse 42 ends the chapter by saying, “Many believed in Him there.” But he was back again to Jerusalem for the Feast of the Dedication what Jews call today Hanukkah,  or the Feast of Lights. He speaks, they deny Him, they want to kill Him. What did they believe about Jesus? Their mantra was: He’s satanic. They did everything they could to convince the people of that. Salvation comes to those who believe. Those who don’t believe don’t belong to Him. It is like the good shepherd, “he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice.” Each sheep knows the voice of his own master. That was something they were familiar with.
Dear brothers and sisters like true sheep who are eager to hear the master’s voice, if we are eager to listen to Him, we will not be separated from eternal life nor will we perish in eternal damnation.

PRAY FOR THE FAITH AND STRENGTH OF PETER
May 5, 2019.
Deacon Dennis Walters

Jesus seems to have had a real soft spot in his heart for Simon Peter. From the first time the two met, Jesus apparently singled him out as having qualities that would prove foundational to His plan. Peter was a natural leader:a successful fisherman with his own business, outgoing, not hesitant to speak for others, and not reluctant to take the risk of becoming a disciple of an unknown rabbi. And, despite his failings, he was loyal.

    Such are some of the reasons why Jesus called Simon the “Rock” upon which He would build His church. The Rock would need strengthening, however. In Luke’s account of the Last Supper, Jesus not only warned Simon of his impending cowardice, but also assured him that his leadership would be needed despite that: “Simon, Simon, behold Satan has demanded to sift all of you like wheat. But I have prayed that your own faith may not fail, and when you have turned back, you must strengthen your brethren.”

    Simon’s faith nearly did fail - but, unlike Judas, he quickly turned back. Now, as we read in today’s Gospel, Jesus wanted to probe Simon’s heart before telling him what “strengthening your brethren” meant: “Simon, son of John, do you love Me?” Three times Jesus asked that question, pointedly using his birth name rather than Peter, the Rock. When Simon three times assured Jesus that he did love Him, Jesus gave him what amounts to a three-fold commission: “Feed my lambs; tend my sheep; feed my sheep.” What is He saying? Scholars interpret Jesus to mean that Simon truly becomes Peter when he fulfills the command to teach, to govern, and to sanctify the Church.
Teaching, governing, and sanctifying are what all popes do, though some are better than others. Some are more naturally talented, and some are more responsive to the Holy Spirit. It strikes me that, over the last 170 years or so, the Catholic Church has had a remarkable string of popes who are strong in one or another of these three areas. Some examples:

    For my money, John Paul II and Benedict XVI were two great teaching popes - John Paul because of his efforts to confirm the faith of the Church through publishing the Catechism and his moral encyclicals at a time when many Catholics were confused about what the Church believes, and Benedict for his own writings and his service under John Paul as guardian of true doctrine. Leo XIII was another pope with a strong teaching ministry; he wrote 75 encyclicals (roughly three per year), laying out many of the basic principles of Catholic social teaching. Both Pius IX and Pius XII exercised the charism of papal infallibility, defining what Catholics believe about the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption of Mary.

    Among popes who exercised strong governing authority in times of Church crisis were three Piuses: Pius IX, who had to steer the Church through the loss of the Papal States and the rise of the Industrial Revolution in the mid-nineteenth century, and Pius XI and Pius XII, who both kept the Church stable through genocidal ravages during and after World War II. The short pontificate of Pope John XXIII is another example of the use of governing authority since, when no one wanted an ecumenical council, he insisted on convoking one, preparing and launching Vatican II. Paul VI completed the council, and began its implementation; he also confirmed Church teaching on birth control in the face of rebellion both within and outside the Church.

A prime example of a pope whose ministry emphasized the role of sanctification is Pope Pius X, who made frequent Communion available to children as young as seven years old, updated the Breviary (now called the Liturgy of the Hours) and the Roman Missal, reformed Church music, and encouraged lay ministry. Perhaps it’s too early to evaluate the ministry of Pope Francis, but I believe that his intention is to show the faithful how to put Church doctrine into practice by personally demonstrating works of charity. His criticisms of a legalistic mindset are meant to teach both clergy and laity not to obey the rules the way children do, but to obey them as adults who love the Lawgiver.
All well and good, some might say, but what difference does a pope in far-off Rome make to you and me? A big one. The pope’s leadership colors everything about the faith we profess and the way we live it. Modern popes give hundreds of speeches a year, some formal, others casual and off-the-cuff; such teaching forms our Christian worldview in both religious and secular matters. The pope’s governing authority is most readily felt in his appointment of bishops, including the one we now have, and we should pray that he appoints good bishops. The pope’s leadership even colors the way we pray, not only how we celebrate liturgy but even how we pray the rosary. Catholics may not always like what the pope says or does - and yes, we do have the right, and sometimes the duty, to criticize his decisions - but our trust is not in the man but in his office, guided by the Holy Spirit.

It’s not a given that any particular holder of the office of Peter will remain faithful. Yes, we’ve had a remarkable string of strong popes. But Satan is always trying to sift Christ’s disciples - including you and me - like wheat, and Jesus is constantly praying for Peter to strengthen his brethren. We, too, should be constantly praying for Peter, whatever criticisms we have of him. Of course, we pray for the pope in our liturgies, but we should also be praying in our personal prayers. Because the pope’s leadership colors everything about the faith we as Catholics profess and how we live it. We need his faith to be strong.

DIVINE MERCY
April 28, 2019
Deacon Dennis Walters

Today is Divine Mercy Sunday, the 8th day of the Feast of Easter. And what is Divine Mercy? The word “Divine” means “given by God” or “like God”. The word “Mercy” means “the refraining from harming or punishing offenders”. So simply put, Divine Mercy is “God refraining from harming or punishing offenders”.

In the Jubilee Year 2000, St. Pope John Paul II established this new feast he exclaimed that morning in St. Peter’s Square, “Divine Mercy!” This is the Easter gift that the Church receives from the risen Christ and offers to humanity at the dawn of the third millennium because he believed that our Church needed to re-emphasize the tremendous gift of Divine Mercy that the Lord wants to pour out on each and every one of us. What happens on the very day when Christ rose from the dead, in His very first appearance to the disciples: what are His first words to them? “Peace be with you,” He says twice. And then? “As the Father has sent Me, so I send you. When He had said this, He breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.’” In the Sacrament of Penance Christ presents Himself sacramentally to us in the person of the priest confessor who speaks and acts, as the Church declares, in persona Christi. It is to Christ that we confess our sins, and it is from Christ that we
receive mercy and pardon. Just as the gift of faith is imparted to Thomas in the context of a direct personal encounter with Christ, so is the gift of divine mercy granted to us in a sacramental encounter with Christ who, hearing our sins, our sorrow for them, and our firm purpose of amendment, forgives and fortifies us in His grace.

Recall that Thomas was absent when Jesus first appeared to the apostles, and he refused to believe their report of this visit. But the following week, when Christ again appears to the disciples, He speaks directly to Thomas: “Put your finger here and see My hands, and bring your hand and put it into My side, and do not be unbelieving, but believe.” Thomas answered and said to Him, “My Lord and my God!” Our Lord confronted Thomas’ reluctance to believe very directly. He presented Himself, indeed his very bodythe nail marks in His hands and the wound in His side-so that Thomas could actually touch them. Confession is just like this. As Christ meets Thomas’ unbelief head-on by presenting Himself to him in person, so He wants to encounter us directly when we seek His mercy. Just as Christ desires to address Thomas’ unbelief directly to bestow upon him the gift of faith, so He desires to meet us to grant the great gift of His forgiveness and mercy in the Sacrament of Penance.
As Pope Francis said in his homily on Ash Wednesday: “There may be a few obstacles, which close the door of the heart. There is the temptation to lock the doors, or to live with our sin, minimizing it, always justifying it, thinking we are no worse than others; this, however, is how the locks of the soul are closed and we remain shut inside, prisoners of evil. Another obstacle is the  shame of opening  the secret door of the heart .… There is a third pitfall, that of distancing ourselves from the door: it happens when we hide in our misery. But locked doors do not restrict Christ’s entry into our hearts. “Jesus came, although the doors were locked, and stood in their midst and said, ‘Peace be with you.’” To quote Pope Francis again: “The Lord’s grace alone frees us. Therefore let us be reconciled, let us listen to Jesus who says to those who are weary and oppressed: ‘Come to Me’”. The Sacrament of Divine Mercy-won for us by the passion, death and resurrection of Christ that we have celebrated in this Easter Season-is the concrete expression of God looks with merciful forgiveness on our sins and the sins of the whole world.

ALLOW GOD TO BREATH RESURRECTION IN YOU
April 21, 2019
Fr. Bosco Padamattummal

You know the story as well as I do. Jesus died on a cross. He was laid in a tomb. It was sealed. On the third day the “very large stone” over the entrance was rolled back. Women go looking for the body. A messenger says, “He has been raised; He is not here.” The tomb is empty and Christ is risen. Dear friends there are many stories from the Bible calling us to new life or resurrection.

Every blind man whose eyes were opened by Jesus experienced new life, a resurrection.

Have you ever felt stuck, and without energy or direction in life? Remember the lame man and Jesus saying, “Stand up, take your mat and walk?” That’s resurrection.

What about Jesus cleansing the temple? Haven’t there been times when you cleaned out and made a new start? Maybe that was your resurrection.

What about the raising of Lazarus? “Unbind him and let him go,” Jesus said. When has your life been unbound? When have you experienced a new freedom that released and enlarged your life?

On the Easter vigil there is a reading from the creation story. It has a message for us from the scriptures on this Easter Sunday. it is a time as if new life had been breathed into you. a new sense of energy, enthusiasm, creativity, and everything was fresh and beautiful. That’s the resurrecting breath of God blowing through your valley of dry bones. 

We want to be reminded that Easter is still real. Nobody needs to go to the tomb of Jesus to  worship Him like the Muslims who go to the tomb of Mohammed in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Jesus is risen from the dead, His tomb is empty. That’s why we show up here every year to hear the same old story and worship the living God.

But our life is different today from what it was last Easter. In whatever ways your life has changed and is different from last Easter, whether you consider it better, worse, or a mixture of both, the story is still true it has changed. Regardless of who you are, what you’ve done, or left undone, Easter is still happening. New life still emerges by the grace of God. You can count on it.

The story was true yesterday, it is true today, and it will be true tomorrow. It may take months or even years for resurrection to free us from the tomb and pull us out of the darkness but it will. That is the promise of today. God never leaves anyone in the darkness of the tomb. The large stones of our lives are being rolled back through His resurrection. Our tombs are being emptied. And the messenger is still proclaiming the good news, “He has been raised; He is not here.”

That’s why the church is so bright and beautiful, filled with light, candles, flowers, and alleluias. Those are not just decorations and songs, they are God’s truth about your life and my life. They are the signs of Easter truth and resurrection reality. 

Easter is not just something from the past to be looked at and celebrated. It is the lens through which we are to see everything. It’s a life to be lived. Getting Jesus out of the tomb is not the ultimate goal of Easter. Easter is about our new life. That means that today is not the end of the story. It’s the beginning. The most important part of Easter is not what happens today. What matters most about Easter is what we do tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that. 

“He is going ahead of you,” said the young man dressed in a white robe to the women. He is going ahead of us rolling back stones, emptying tombs, preparing new places, and calling forth life. Every cross is flowering with new life, every tomb is becoming a womb of new birth, and every darkness is being overcome by new light. 

If we leave here today the same people we were as when we came we’ve missed the point of this day. Easter isn’t the annual remembrance and celebration of an event in history. It is a call to a new way of being. It is a new way of living. 

SEE THE SALVATION OF GOD
April 14, 2019
Deacon Dennis Walters

As we enter Holy Week, we re-live the events of salvation that Jesus gained for us on the cross. But what do we mean by salvation?

Words for saving and salvation occur over 260 times in the Old Testament. In the early Old Testament (before the Babylonian exile), salvation was not regarded as something for another life, but for this life. When God led Israel out of Egypt, He told Moses, "Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the LORD, which He will work for you today; for the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall never see again” (Ex 14:13). Salvation was something that all flesh could see (Is 40:3-5).
God delivers from enemies, and provides victory in war. Although some heroes such as Samson, Gideon, or David were regarded as “saviors” real salvation comes from God alone: “Deliver me from my enemies, O my God, protect me from those who rise up against me … and save me from bloodthirsty men” (Ps 59:1-2).

God’s will to save was rooted in His covenant with Israel. Through Abraham, He had promised to provide descendants and a land, and Israel relied on His righteousness and faithfulness to deliver them. But the covenant came with conditions - blessings and curses, most of them attached to that land. For God to provide salvation (keep Israel on the land), Israel needed to keep covenant by remaining faithful to its observance. This is the context in which Jeremiah urged Jerusalem to sincere repentance, to avoid deportation to Babylon: “O Jerusalem, wash your heart from wickedness, that you may be saved” (Jer 4:14).

After the exile, salvation took on a different shade of meaning. It was still mainly for this life; for example, the restoration of Israel to its own land: “For God will save Zion and rebuild the cities of Judah; and His servants shall dwell there and possess it” (Ps 69:35-36). But with Isaiah, salvation became messianic and acquired an eternal aspect: “… my salvation will be forever, and my deliverance will never be ended … my deliverance will be forever, and my salvation to all generations" (Is 45:6, 8). Salvation would mean a new Zion and a new Israel (Is 40-66).
It is in these senses that salvation was visible, because Israel will see its salvation as a nation, and so will all the other nations.

The New Testament offers a very different understanding, but one based on the older principles. For example, Israel is still delivered from bondage, but it’s from a bondage to an internal captor, from sin. The angel Gabriel tells Joseph in a dream that Mary “will bear a son, and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sin” (Mt 1:21). This salvation - this exodus from sin - applies not only to Israelites, but to all mankind: “God our Savior … desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim 2:4).

As before, it is God who saves. This is why Jesus (Yeshuah) has a name that means “Yahweh saves.” Salvation comes through Jesus Christ alone: “… there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). Moreover, Jesus is the source of an eternal salvation, which implies the existence of an afterlife: “… being made perfect He became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey Him” (Heb 5:9).

Salvation is a three-stage process that we accept and grow into through faith. The first is the salvation that begins in this life through baptism: “Baptism …now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a clear conscience” (1 Pt 3:21). The second continues through our consistent and firm confession of faith: “man believes with his heart and so is justified, and he confesses with his lips and so is saved” (Rom 10:10). We “work out our salvation in fear and trembling” (Phil 2:12), which means that our final salvation depends on living our faith with deep respect for God and a loving dread of offending Him. The third stage of salvation comes through the realization of our hope of heaven: “For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience” (Rom 8:24-25). To put it another way, I have been saved (through baptism), I am being saved (through my confession of faith), and I will be saved (through the exercise of hope).

In a way, the Christian hope of salvation is still concrete and something you can see. It’s practical, something that grows in us day by day. We see it by the changes in character that we call the fruit of the Spirit: “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Gal 5:22-23). These traits can even change one’s physical appearance.

Our salvation is not certain in the sense that we can presume heaven is ours regardless of our conduct. But those who work daily to cooperate with God’s grace can have a reasonable assurance of salvation. St. Paul prays for that: “… it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruits of righteousness which come through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God” (Phil 1:9-11).