From The Pastor

March 11, 2022

Dear St. Theresa family,

This weekend we encounter the Transfiguration of Jesus. The scripture is Luke 9:28-36.

The meaning of this extraordinary encounter can never be fully explained. The event on that mountain top is a mystery because, though it happened in time, it comes from beyond time. For a moment, the veil between time and eternity, between heaven and earth, was lifted. Jesus’ three friends caught a momentary glimpse of the invisible, spiritual world of God. The concluding words, “Listen to him,” express the significance of this mystery for Jesus’ friends: not only for the three on the mountain with him, but for all the friends of Jesus, including us.

Now, we are the company of those who listen to his words. Jesus does not grant us, any more than he granted to Peter, James, and John, the continuous vision of his Glory. We do not live on the mountaintop of great spiritual experiences. We live in the valley of life’s ordinary duties. We do not look for dazzling visions from beyond. Instead, we listen for Jesus’ voice.

Jesus speaks to us in many ways: in the Scriptures, in the teaching of his church, in the circumstances of daily life, and perhaps most importantly in those we encounter along life’s way.  In the world to come it will be different. There we shall see God. In this world, however, we live by faith, and not by sight.

This is the way Jesus lived. But how bitterly was his faith tested, as Moses’ faith was tested by the stubborn Israelites. But unlike Moses, Jesus would himself become the sacrifice that once and for all completes all other sacrifices.  His walk to that sacrifice was an uphill walk all the way.  This time it was not a mountain but rather a hill just outside of town.  There with his arms stretched out he fulfilled God’s will for him, and God’s own sacrifice was complete.

Just as Abraham listened to God’s voice and offered what was most precious to him on Mt. Moriah, Jesus summons us to follow him on the way of the cross: to endure whatever trials and sufferings life may bring.   

The way of the cross will lead us, as it led Jesus, through suffering to death.  But beyond death for us, as for him, is resurrection to eternal life.  Then faith will give way to sight. Then our earthly pilgrimage between a mostly overcast sky will yield to the uninterrupted vision of God’s glory.  We will have reached our true homeland, that heavenly city which needs neither sun nor moon, for as read in the Book of Revelation: “for the glory of God gives it light, and the lamp is the Lamb.”

Now, however, is the time not for seeing, but for hearing.  We listen to God’s voice and do what he says in obedience as he speaks to us those words first uttered to those three friends of Jesus on a mountaintop: “This is my Son, my beloved.  Listen to him.”

Have a transformed week,

Fr. Larry

March 3, 2022

Dear St. Theresa family,

At our parish council retreat last Saturday during discussion of the effects Covid has had on people, Ollie Zimmerman commented that many people are seeking some sense of hope.  And by hope I wondered if what was meant was the stuff of a meaningful existence.  In thinking about this my mind went to that trinity of words “faith, hope, and love.”  Ruminating on this I found myself reviewing the great philosophers to see what they considered as the most essential thing for meaningful existence. Socrates for all his wisdom had it wrong; it is not the unexamined but finally the uncommitted life that is not worth living. Descartes too was mistaken; “Cogito ergo sum” – “I think therefore I am”? Nonsense. “Amo ergo sum” – “I love therefore I am.” Or, as with unconscious eloquence St. Paul wrote, “Now abide faith, hope, love, these three; and the greatest of these is love.”   I doubt if in any other scriptures of the world there is a more radical statement of ethics.  If we fail in love, we fail in all things else.

So, in considering this topic of a need for hope, faith seems to be the starting place.  What is faith?  Faith is being grasped by the power of love. Faith is recognizing that if at Christmas Jesus became like us, it was so that we might become more like him.  We know what that means: watching Jesus heal the sick, empower the poor, and scorn the powerful, we see transparently the power of God at work.  Watching Zacchaeus climb a tree a crook and come down a saint, watching Paul set out a hatchet man for the Pharisees and return a fool for Christ, we know that our lives too can become channels for divine mercy to flow out to save the lost and the suffering. I love the recklessness of faith. First you leap, and then you grow wings.  

If faith puts us on the road, hope keeps us there. It’s hope that helps us keep the faith, despite the evidence, knowing that only in so doing has the evidence any chance of changing. Hope has nothing to do with optimism. Its opposite is not pessimism but despair.  And if Jesus never allowed his soul to be cornered into despair, clearly, we Christians shouldn’t either. 

 Hope criticizes what is, hopelessness rationalizes it. Hope resists, hopelessness adapts. How often it is that those furthest from the seats of power are nearer to the heart of things. Remember that listening to Jesus, seated on the mountainside were no Roman centurions, no King Herods, no Pharisees. These were ordinary folk, the kind likely as not to stone the prophets, to beg Moses to lead them back to Egypt. Yet it was to them that Jesus said, “You are the salt of the earth”; “You are the light of the world.” Has common humanity ever received so high a compliment from so informed a source?

One of my favorite stories concerns a beggar in sixteenth-century Paris who, desperately ill, was taken to the operating table of a group of doctors.  In Latin, which they were sure he would not understand, the doctors said, “Faciamus experimentum in anima vile” (Let us experiment of this vile fellow.)  The beggar, who was actually an impoverished student, later to become a renowned poet, Marc Antoine Muret, replied from the slab on which they had laid him, “Animam vilem appellas pro qua Christus non dedignatus mori est?” (Will you call vile one for which Christ did not disdain to die?) If Christ did not disdain to die for any of us, who are we not to live for all of us?

And then there is the greatest of these, love. I believe that God dwells with those who make love their aim.  And there is no sentimentality in this love; it is not endlessly pliable, always yielding. Prophets from Amos and Isaiah to Martin Luther King Jr. have shown how frequently compassion demands confrontation.  Today tens of thousands of Ukrainians are all too aware of what love demands.  Love without criticism is a kind of betrayal. Lying is done with silence as well as with words.  And always the love that is of God lies on the far side of justice, never on the near side.  

It is clear that the greatest evils of humanity are due to lack of love and that the New Testament’s “miraculous catch” in Luke 5 was not the overabundance of fish Peter and the rest of them caught that day, but the fact that Peter and the rest were caught up, even as we are, in the net of Christ’s love.  The Bible is correct in stating that the opposite of love is not hate but fear.  “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.”

Have a hopeful Lent,
Fr. Larry

March 2, 2022

Dear St. Theresa family,

Today is Ash Wednesday and I want to encourage you not to give up on giving up, but I do want you to give up on your idea of what giving up is all about. So, before you give up on this sermon let me explain. 

Lent always begins with the Church’s admonition to prayer, fasting, repentance, almsgiving and these are all important aspects of our Lent observances but fasting and what fasting represents is what I want to speak to today. 

Fasting has been such an integral aspect of Lent that we make it interchangeable with “giving something up.”   That’s the question we often ask one another this time of year: “What are you giving up for Lent?”  And why? The why is easy.  Jesus fasted in the desert and that gave him the clarity to see through Satan’s temptation.  We need that same clarity. Satan is standing by with all kinds of reasons why you should give up on your giving up.

The idea is that the sacrifice represented by whatever it is we give up brings to mind the sacrifice by which Christ won for us eternal salvation.  And that’s a good thing to do. The sacrifices we make during this season are meant to help keep this gift of salvation before us each day. We offer our sacrifice as a gift and as a personal reminder that we are indeed sinners and in constant need of redemption that event on the cross gave us.  The sacrifice we make and the penance we offer in reparation for our sinfulness gives us a share in the victory Christ won for us.   

But I am not sure that the “giving up” we usually have in mind meets that purpose.  What do I mean? First off, let’s look at “giving up.” Typically, when we give up it is a resignation. “I give up.” It’s the decision to let go of a dream, a hope, a career, a purpose, even a person because of some failure. “I give up.” Being human and accustomed to some degree of self-preservation, when we give up something we proceed to convince ourselves that our life is going to be better for having given it up.  Maybe that’s true and maybe it is just wishful thinking.

Because the “I give up.” is, in our minds an admission of inadequacy, we then justify it by advertising how much better off we are because of what we gave up even when it is not true. “That job was never right for me.” “That relationship was a dead end from the get-go, I just didn’t have my eyes open.” “I can live just fine without it.” If you want a simple way of evaluating your sacrifice, ask this question: “Is it something I value and is it something valuable in the eyes of the receiver?”  If you want to know how God feels about what often passes as sacrifice think about the couple who got a broken second-hand leaf blower for a wedding present. “Well, we didn’t need it anymore and we knew they didn’t have one and it will be easy for them to get it fixed.” Truthfully that’s what Lenten “giving up has become” for many. Knowing that changing the culture never begins with semantics, I’m going to offer another way of thinking about “giving up.”

Lent is a season of repentance. Recognizing what needs changing in our lives and making sincere and concentrated efforts to do it. Sacrifices are not always the things we “give up.”  They are offerings we make of something that is of real value to us given in recognition that there is something we need that is greater and worth the sacrifice. The giving up of Lent is the Lifting up of something we hold dear and saying this is not for me, it is for you.  

For 40 days I lift this up to you alone. Doing this redirects us towards God. Fasting is a conscious sacrifice of a good thing that reminds us of a better thing, a higher thing, an ultimate thing. Fasting, a real fasting and not a legalistic avoidance of something so we can check off one more obligation.  Fasting is not lobster instead of steak on Friday. Fasting is not a 40-day program to shed the results of the excesses of the holidays so we can look good in a swimsuit this summer. Fasting is not payment on an insurance policy.  So, what am I giving up? Am I giving up a something that is important to me?  Is it being lifted up as an offering that makes a statement about what is ultimately important? Am I giving up a sacrifice that is pleasing to God?

Unlike the fasting proclaimed by the Prophet Joel as an appeasement to God who would otherwise destroy the city of Nineveh, our sacrifice, our fasting is the preparation for a celebration of the fact that Nineveh was saved, that we are saved by the sacrifice of Christ who did his 40-day battle with Satan and won his victory over sin and death.

This year when someone asks you what you have given up for Lent offer a smile and tell them about the joyful, meaningful sacrifice you are making to smite the forces of evil that target you and proclaim the truth that Christ is risen from death.  In the meantime, we have the sign of Jonah, the sign of the cross in ashes as reminder that there is a greater than Jonah here and since we were worthy of the sacrifice he made for us, he is worthy of our own sacrifice.

In Christ,
Fr. Larry

February 28, 2022

Dear St. Theresa family,
Lent is upon us and the talk around the office is “what are you giving up this year?”  Some still say “It’s not what you give up but rather what you take on.”  While that sounds noble it is probably safe to say that many of us are so busy that there is no “taking on” unless there is first some “giving up!”

The three disciplines of Lent, almsgiving, prayer, and fasting as found in the Gospel of Matthew chapter 6 includes Jesus’ instructions to his disciples on the need to exercises these disciplines with discretion.  No trumpet blowing, no letting the left hand know what the right hand is doing, no neglecting your appearance, etc.

This is reasonable and expected but then the text becomes transactional and that’s where I get a little bogged down. Each time the instruction is given it is concluded with “and your Father who sees…will repay you.”  Isn’t it more gracious when we do these things for their own sake rather than for recompense?  Perhaps it is because we are all children of God, a fact we often forget.  And any parent knows that to get a child to do anything you had better have a reward up a sleave as an incentive.  Are we that spiritually immature as to require a reward?

Apparently, yes.  What’s in it for me is the question we all ask when it comes to investing ourselves in God.  What’s in it for me is not about a commodity but a relationship and specifically a relationship of trust.  It is Christ pointing to his coming passion death and resurrection as a portal for our eternal salvation. This is something incomprehensible to anyone who refuses to see beyond their portfolio, their self-sufficiency and their creature comforts.  The righteous deeds that need to be done quietly, the prayers said in privacy, the fasting that goes unnoticed are all given for us to do for no other reason than to be reminded that all our trust must be in God and nowhere else.

We are given these weeks of Lent as an opportunity to reconnect with this saving act which God in Christ endlessly and selflessly offers for us.  We should give some thought in these next few days to our charity, prayer life, and self-denial.  Then when we come forward to receive the ashes and hear those words “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return” it will spark the remembrance of the grace of our origin and the certainty of our destiny and in so doing be the impetus that draws us closer to who and what we are, trusting children of God.

A blessed Lent

Fr. Larry


2021 Messages From Fr. Larry

2020 Messages From Fr. Larry