Fr. Bresowar's Homilies: September 2013

Lec # 135- 25^th Sun of OT- Sept 22, 2013- Fr. Bresowar

So, amongst the many many things that are going on in the world today, I’ve chosen to highlight in this homily something I read on Thursday when I went to www.cnn.com. Now you might ask, “Why did you do something like that father?” And simply put, I don’t know… I just decided to check the news according to how CNN wanted to deliver it at that moment. Sometimes I’ll go to Foxnews.com, occasionally, I’ll check out msnbc, or google, or yahoo, or even the bbc or npr or whatever… I like many young people today, mostly get my news from the Internet.

And for anyone who has been on the Internet, that should be most of you here, depending on where you go to get your news, generally speaking, it comes with some sort of bias. I’ve yet to find a credible news source, not that I’ve been looking terribly much, that delivers the news just as it happened, without some sort of agenda.

And generally, when I go to get the news, I find myself pretty skeptical of what I’m reading, as one-liners hardly ever tell the full story.

Usually the headline is the first thing that grabs us… President Obama does this…. Pope Francis says that… Russia does this… or… This person killed this person, Obamacare is great, Obamacare is horrible… and so on and so forth.

Well, just on Thursday, I got on CNN and read the headline:

Pope: (says) Leave Gays Alone. That’s the headline… so you would be left to think if that is all you read, that we are suppose to be indifferent, apathetic towards homosexuality. Leave them alone…

That’s the first thing CNN wants us to see.

Then the subtitle read: “Church gets locked up in small-minded rules”

So my first thought upon seeing this glaring in your face, big letters headlines that pretty much drowns out the rest of the news stories on the site, is… “here we go again… the pope said something, a lot of something’s… the media picked out one phrase, and then misrepresented the Pope or the teachings of the Church.” I thought this because this seems to be the norm.

We know what drives the media, money, they don’t worry about what Jesus said in the Gospel today, you cannot serve God and Money… they would agree, and would choose Money. So their objective assumedly is not so much to report the news in a way that is balanced, but is to report in a way which gets high traffic on their websites.

That’s why they love scandal, because scandal means high traffic, and high traffic means money.

If they can report what the Pope says in a way which will either promote high traffic or fit their agenda they will do so.

Knowing this, and having seen this over and over, especially with Pope Francis, I set out to see what the Pope actually said in the interview. Because if you just get your news from the American main stream media, you might come to believe that Pope Francis is about to change every teaching in the Catholic Church to placate the ever changing cultural needs of those who are in power right now.

We need to be careful because many are trying to paint a picture of the pope that is not accurate. They are trying to feed us with what they want us to believe. And they are using him to do so.

Aside from the brief two sentence headline that I read on CNN, the rest of the interview from which CNN referenced, which was 12000 words long, said a lot more. I read it.

If you look at MSM headlines, what you take-away will be that Pope Francis is saying that abortion isn’t a big deal or that homosexuality is okay and that the Church doesn’t have a right to tell anyone what to do.

That’s not what the Pope is doing or saying.

The Pope insists that these are wounds, homosexuality and abortion, which need to be addressed in sacramental confession. He says if a person approaches the Lord with a repentant heart, who are we to judge? He also says that we as Catholics should not be defined by these two issues alone. That we should be focusing on other areas as well. He talks about the danger, for example, of gossip. Which is also a problem and much more prevalent than abortion or homosexual acts.

He reminds us to look at sinners, ourselves included as human persons first, human persons who are beloved by God.

He is clear that he is a son of the Church, and he is not changing any teaching of the Church, but he also does not want us to be so rigid that we do not allow God’s grace to work. He says we do not need to focus solely on abortion or gay marriage all the time. And he doesn’t seem to like the headline, the Church condemns this, or the Pope condemns that. He seems to speak frequently of God’s infinite mercy and he wants the Church to be seen as instrument for that mercy.

HE says a lot more in the interview, which if you want to know, you’ll have to read because the media will not report on everything he said.

Unfortunately, it hears what it wants, and reports what it wants. It clearly has an agenda which is not the same agenda of Pope Francis.

This requires of us to be vigilant and really understand what the Pope is saying in light of the Catechism of the Catholic Church less we fall victim to the musings of the media who are con-artists, creative at taking things out of context, twisting them, and then using those words to push home their own hopes and dreams.

But we are children of Truth, we live in the Truth which is Christ Jesus and our conscience knows that the moral law is already written on our heart. We are children of the Church, who is our mother.

Francis’ pontificate is going to be about evangelization and putting a motherly face on the Church.

She, our mother, the church, will not lead us astray. She never has, and she never will. Neither will our Pope, the vicar of Christ. It is not for us to decide for ourselves what is good or bad… that’s the way of the world. God is good, and everything that participates in Him is good. Those things not of God, which are clear in our conscience, and scripture and magisterial teaching, are evil. They lead to destruction. And yet, we must meet people who are on this destructive path with compassion. This is not to say we accept destruction or destructive behavior, but that we find a place to meet people so as to help them move towards Jesus Christ, who is the healer of all wounds.

May God bless us all, and please in your prayers, pray for the Pope.

Lec # 126- 22^nd Sun of OT- Sept 1, 2013- Fr. Bresowar

My brothers and sisters in Christ-

No one likes to be put in his or her place. We do this all the time with children; we tell them “no”, you can’t do this or that, and they get mad at us. They get put in their place; but as you know, this is mostly necessary. Because they have no choice usually, they have to conform. But when this happens when we are adults, to us, often times it can have humiliating effect.

We have all been there too. Each of us has had those moments in our lives where we have had the not-so-pleasant experience, as adults, of being put in our place. Something goes wrong, something doesn’t go as planned, someone steps up and challenges us, and often times our pride get wounded and rather we asked for it or not, we are humbled.

And yet, how we react to the times we are humbled says a lot about who we are as Christians. For to be humbled, is really to mimic Jesus, who humbled himself to the point of death, death on a cross.

Pride, we always say is our enemy as followers of Jesus. Humility is our friend. But why is this? Why is so necessary that we as Christians, go about looking to be humbled, and to kill our pride?

Well first and foremost, because Jesus Christ is the humble servant. And Christ came to show us and teach us the Truth which he embodies. He said “seek to serve, not to be served. If you would great, you must become least among all. Don’t seek the place of honor at the banquet, but rather, seek the lowest spot. Make yourself nothing in the eyes of the world, be meek and lowly.” Not weak and lowly… but meek and lowly. The first shall be last, and the last shall be first in the Kingdom of God.

Secondly, pride has nasty effects. Starting in the Garden of Eden and ever since then, pride has been standing in our way as the chief obstacle to receiving God’s love and peace. Why? Because ultimately pride seeks to worship self, and not God. The rewards of self-worship fails in comparison to the rewards of worshiping God.

And when we suffer the effects self-worship, we turn on the Truth, that God is Love, and God is Life and Goodness, and then we are left with nothing that resembles love, life or goodness, mainly hate, despair and depression, darkness. And then, often times, we medicate ourselves to deal with the effects, instead humiliate ourselves. Humility is the answer to many of our problems as individuals and as a society. Pride, is at the root of every sin; and is cause of most of our problems.

And so, the Lord warns us against it. He says to us, get rid of it. And he shows us the path to happiness is not the path that we assume it is, that the world tells us it is, but rather it’s a paradox to the way world, one which unless you try it, you can’t understand it. That to lower oneself, to debase oneself for the sake of others, to serve first, to self-identify with the poorest of the poor, to die to the world, to just not care anymore about wealth and riches, and politics, and worldly fame and popularity, and to be honest and good people… this, my brothers and sisters, is Heaven. This is true joy, and yet so many are afraid to taste it. They are reserved and the cannot find this joy. If they would just let go of their fear.

“Amen, I say to you, there is no one who has given up house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands for my sake and for the sake of the gospel who will not receive a hundred times more now in this present age,” our Lord says. “Houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and eternal life in the age to come. But many that are first will be last, and (the) last will be first.”

Sirach tells us in scripture, “conduct your affairs with humility, and you will be loved more than a giver of gifts. Humble yourself the more, the greater you are, and you will find favor with God.”

Jesus goes as far as to tell us not to invite friends when we have a party, but to invite the weak, the lame, the outcast, the lowly, the “nothings” in the eyes of the world… the nothings… “and you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”

Can you imagine how socially unacceptable it would be for us to go out of our way to love those who are outcasts? To put ourselves at the service of misfits, and addicts, the vagabonds, and homeless, and the like? Not in this culture would that be acceptable.

And yet this is what our vicar of Christ, Pope Francis, is doing and is imploring us to do.

So what stands in our way? Our pride and our fear. My brothers and sisters, We must accept humiliation as our Lord did, and then our pride and fear will go away and be replaced with firm resolve and purpose.

So we pray for humility, “Lord make me a humble servant.” Don’t be surprised if he gives us all the opportunities to be humiliated. Instead of complaining about it, thank God for it, because it is exactly what we need to kill our pride and become Jesus Christ to others.

God Bless you and keep you, and may he make us humble servants of the most poor among us.

Fr. Bresowar's Homilies

What the Media said vs. What the Pope really said.

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