First off, my apologies. I haven’t updated this blog since – February?! My hope had been to
update it much more often, and I still hope to do that and publish homilies, random jottings,
rants, photos, and share whatever else may be on my mind.
Since February, I’ve become pastor of Saint Joseph and Saint Peter’s Catholic Churches in Delano, Minnesota, a town on the outskirts of the Twin Cities, 40 minutes west of downtown Minneapolis. It’s been a great fit.
Now that it’s November, our readings take a turn to focus on the last things of death, heaven and hell, and take a tone of being ready for those moments in our lives. That can be challenging as it’s easy to think death is very far away. It may be, but we have to be ready.
So what if you die kind of unprepared? Is all lost? I think this is where God’s love takes over. This week’s Gospel was of 10 bridesmaids who were waiting for the groom’s arrival for a wedding to begin; 5 were ready, 5 were not. The 5 who were not ready get shut out of the party when he arrives, as they were not there. It can be scary to hear, but we must remember as well how merciful and compassionate God is. In all of us is a bit of oil if you will and sometimes we just need to learn how to use it better and know where to go to buy more. The Gospel can be found here: http://usccb.org/bible/readings/110611.cfm.
Catholics believe that if there’s some work to do after death yet, we learn how to love God fully by having God purge from our souls that which prevents us from loving Him as we should – “Purgatory” is the name for the process. But it can be so misunderstood; for it is a place of joy and God’s love, not the equivalent of the workhouse for a lighter offense compared to the super-max facility that is hell.
Here’s my homily for this week. Have a blessed day! – Fr. Paul (Story at the start is taken from “A Second Help of Chicken Soup for the Soul.” The books have wonderful stories to start homilies or to just inspire.
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During Napoleon’s invasion of Russia, his troops were battling in the middle of yet another small town in the endless winter, when he was accidentally separated from his men. A group of Russian Cossacks spotted him and began chasing him through the twisting streets. Napoleon ran for his life and ducked into a little furrier’s shop on a side alley. As Napoleon entered the shop, gasping for breath, he saw the furrier and cried piteously, “Save me, save me! Where can I hide?” The furrier said, “Quick, under this big pile of furs in the corner,” and he covered Napoleon up with many furs.
No sooner had he finished than the Russian Cossacks burst in the door, shouting “Where is he? We saw him come in.” Despite the furrier’s protests, they tore his shop apart trying to find Napoleon. They poked into the pile of furs with swords but didn’t find him. Soon, they gave up and left.
After some time, Napoleon crept out from under the furs, unharmed, just as his personal guards came in the door. The furrier turned to Napoleon and sad timidly, “Excuse me for asking this question of such a great man, but what was it like to be under those furs, knowing that the next moment would surely be your last?”
Napoleon drew himself up to his full height and said to the furrier indignantly, “How could you ask such a question of me, the Emperor Napoleon! Guards, take this impudent man out, blindfold him and execute him. I, myself, will personally give the command to fire!”
The guards grabbed the poor furrier, dragged him outside, stood him up against a wall and blindfolded him. The furrier could see nothing, but he could hear the movements of the guards as they slowly shuffled into a line and prepared their rifles, and he could hear the soft ruffling sound of his clothing in the cold wind. He could feel the wind tugging gently at his clothes and chilling his cheeks, and the uncontrollable trembling in his legs. Then, he heard Napoleon clear his throat and call out slowly, “Ready…aim…” In that moment, knowing that even these few sensations were about to be taken from him forever, a feeling that he couldn’t describe welled up in him as tears poured down his cheeks.
After a long period of silence, the furrier heard footsteps approaching him and the blindfold was stripped from his eyes. Still partially blinded by the sudden sunlight, he saw Napoleon’s eyes looking deeply and intently into his own – eyes that seemed to se into every dusty corner of his being. Then Napoleon said softly, “Now you know.”
Thankfully most of us do not go through such a stressful situation as the poor furrier in the story, but despite his rather cold way of teaching, Napoleon’s lesson to the furrier is worth thinking about, because none of us knows when our last moments on this earth will come. Most anyone would be upset and nervous if faced with the sudden prospect of dying like the furrier, but one thing that we can do is to prepare for that moment, which is what is at the heart of this weeks Gospel.
A story is told of a wedding feast. The groom is coming, but no one knows when. It might sound foreign to those of us who are used to getting an invitation and getting ready for a big event, but this kind of wedding feast was common in ancient Palestine. A couple would not honeymoon, but have a week-long celebration at their home with many visitors. In fact, a tradition that is still done had bridesmaids keep the bride company until the groom arrives. The bridal party would wait for the groom, and this may be anytime over a period of several days. A man would go ahead to announce the arrival of the groom, but it could even be in the middle of the night – so the party would have to be ready if he chose to come in the middle of the night. No one was allowed on the streets after dark without a lit lamp, and once the groom arrived and the celebration began, late-comers could not come into the ceremony. One had to prepare and be ready at any moment.
These days we don’t do weddings like this in our culture; we know when the wedding is going to happen months in advance, and have everything carefully planned for the event. But the parable applies to us because the bridegroom is Christ and the bridesmaids are you and me, the people awaiting Christ’s return. We still await that, and one way or another we all stand before Christ. The thing is, death for many seems out there and distant. Certainly the furrier didn’t think it would come for him anytime soon. And while there was no way for him to prepare for what Napoleon did to him, there are ways that we can prepare for our encounter with God, for while we should not live as though death is right around the corner, we should live as if we know its coming.
For one, we need to remember that there are things that we can’t magically get at the last minute. Think back to school. Did you ever try to study for a test just a few minutes before the day of the exam? Odds are that probably did not result in the grade you wanted. The same is true with skills for sports and hobbies, but it’s also true with how we form our souls. A person doesn’t change overnight – rather they are formed over a lifetime. We need to use our time here on earth to prepare for our encounter with God by trying our best to change for the better. This happens when people gradually do things like incorporate prayer into their lives; when they take steps to move past habitual sins; or when they take their faith seriously by coming back to Church, or find new ways to live it out during the week. These are things which others might help us with, but ultimately are things we have to make a decision for or against. The bridesmaids couldn’t borrow the oil they needed, and similarly, we can’t borrow a relationship with God; that’s something we need to possess on our own. We also can’t borrow character; that’s something we develop – and we use our lives to develop them.
The thing of it is though is for many of us, that development continues after death. The Church gives the name to this process “Purgatory.”
You rarely hear this talked about anymore from the pulpit, mostly because people often have a really big misunderstanding of it. Most people think of it like the first-ring suburb of Hell, but it is anything but that. Purgatory, rather, is all about hope and the unbelievable mercy of our God. In John Paul II’s words: “Those who after death exist in a state of purification are already in the love of Christ.” They are already in Christ’s love – they are just doing the final preparation for theHeavenlyKingdom. So how does this final preparation work?
We often interpret that final preparation though as perhaps hanging around a miserable waiting room for one’s number to be called, or perhaps like a concentration camp. Scripture speaks of a “cleansing fire” but when you say that, just like with Hell, you get the wrong imagery. It’s not about fire or waiting, as when we die we are outside of time, but rather about learning how to purge, the root word of purgatory. In writing on it, then-Cardinal Ratzinger said: “There is no fire, only the Lord Himself.”
Think for a minute again back two weeks, when in our Gospel, we heard Jesus stress how we must love of God with your whole heart, mind and soul, and then to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. If I were to ask for a show of hands, I think everyone’s hand would go up when I asked “who here loves God?” But do we fully? Probably not, for as humans, our hearts can be divided. The pope says that for our full assent of faith to emerge, it is “only with difficulty” and that we need an encounter with the Lord to transform us, to remove all the muck that builds up over a lifetime; those loves of self, of sins such as pride or of the flesh. Despite the sins and despite forgiveness, the effects remain and as such we see His face, asSaint Paulput it, as through a glass darkly. His love is the fire that, the pope says, “burns away our dross and re-forms us to be vessels of eternal joy.” The spiritual life is a series of steps forward with an occasional step back. Purgatory corrects this. It isn’t a matter of time, for it’s not a place where one finishes some kind of sentence. Rather, its a process that involves learning how to let go, of letting the Lord transform us so we can love Him properly. In the words of one preacher, it is not a place where bad people become good people, but where good people become perfected in love. As far as pain, don’t think of it as a physical pain, but rather a blessed pain that, as Pope Benedict says is one where we see the “impurity and sickness of our lives” and where “the holy power of (God’s) love sears through us like a flame, enabling us to become totally ourselves and thus totally of God.” The pain then involves letting go of those things we might cling to that are sinful that keep us from loving God as we should.
While it might sound at first like a frightening parable – we are going to be judged and we do not know when, we have to remember some key things with it. For one, it should be coupled with the words of our second reading: “ if we believe that Jesus died and rose, so too will God, through Jesus, bring with him those who have fallen asleep” and that we should not be like those who have “no hope.” Jesus is always reaching out to us, and rarely do we shut him out of our lives completely. I think for many, there is some oil they have accumulated over the course of a lifetime. We buy more oil on our earthly journey by growing in grace, by receiving the sacraments and living out the faith. But when the bridegroom arrives, I don’t think we are left out in the dark. Rather, before going to the dinner party, we might be asked to wait to come in so we can learn to have the oil we have been given to burn even brighter. That, in a nutshell, is what purgatory can be defined as: a place for the learning process to unfold. And we do not learn alone. We celebrated All Soul’s Day this week and pray for the dead during the month of November because, in the Holy Father’s words, we aren’t isolated from one another. Humans are “related to others by love or hate” When we die we are judged by Christ, but also by His whole body, meaning the saints. That is why we ask for their intercession. We also pray for the dead because love knows no limits, including death. Think about how we constantly pray for one another over the course of our lives. The temptation might be to think that death is the endgame and that there is nothing more we can do for the person. But we see this happen in the Bible, such as in the book of Maccabees where the soldier Judas takes up a collection to offer sacrifice for the dead, and prays for the dead along with the other soldiers. This is something that has continued from the earliest years of the Church up until today, where a Mass is often offered for someone who has died. The challenge for us is to also keep it up in our personal lives, because the message we so often encounter is that death is something not to be talked about and forgotten. But that’s not the Christian message.
For a time in my life, I struggled accepting Purgatory because it seemed to diminish what happened on the Cross. But what I needed was the proper perspective on it. Christ took my sins upon Him and made my entrance into Heaven possible. But I also bear responsibility for my sins. He might provide the oil, but I need to obtain it over a lifetime. The Eucharist and Confession may remove the sin, but the effects of my sins still remain. Think for a minute how often we confess the same things again and again. We have that thorn in our side that we want gone, but we can’t seem to pull out. So many sins are habitual – profanity, lying, sins of the flesh, etc. – and we never really fully stop being attracted to them over a lifetime. Purgatory helps us learn how to finally pull the thorn out.
It was about 5 years ago around this time of year that I was walking into a Target near my parents home. There was a young man about 20 or so sitting on a chair in front of the store. I walked by him not knowing why he was there, but thinking maybe I should talk to him as he could be doing a fundraiser for the homeless or some kind of food drive, as people generally don’t sit on a lawn chair in front of a Target, especially November. I walked out and a store employee followed me and walked up to him. He said to him, “are you here for the Wii?” referring to the new Nintendo Wii that was to be released the next morning. Indeed he was, and he was the first person in the line. There’s nothing sinful about waiting in line for a Wii; I have one at the rectory, and I’ve waited in lines for things much more wonderful than a Wii, called Krispy Kreme doughnuts. Ninetendo Wii’s though wear out over time, and a new system will eventually be released by the company, with the Wii left to collect dust in a basement much like my old Atari and original Nintendo do currently in my parent’s basement. Even wonderful Krispy Kreme folded here in Minnesota, though doughnuts of good quality can still be found. Such things of this world are wonderful to enjoy, and while it’s fun to get better at a video game or mentally prepare for a hot glazed doughnut, there is only one thing that can give us lasting happiness, which is heaven. All of us have been given an invitation to the banquet table, and the celebration will be beyond anything we can imagine. Our job is to make sure the things of this world are used for proper enjoyment, but that they don’t take us away from keeping our eyes fixed on our ultimate goal of heaven. Hopefully when the bride groom arrives we won’t be looking around for an unopened envelope, but ready to meet Him and prepare for that day not with fear, but with hope, knowing that even if we may not be fully ready for the party just yet, His grace, love and help will be there for us to help us to wear the wedding clothes well and to find the way to the celebration.
