Father Robert Elias, OCD: Homily at Cana in Galilee

Photo credit: Lorelei Low, ocds.  (Cana in Galilee 2018)

JOHN 2:1-11 – There was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and his disciples were also invited to the wedding. When the wine ran short, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.”

And Jesus said to her, “Woman, how does your concern affect me? My hour has not yet come.” His mother said to the servers, “Do whatever he tells you.”

Now there were six stone water jars there for Jewish ceremonial washings, each holding twenty to thirty gallons. Jesus told them, “Fill the jars with water.” So they filled them to the brim. Then he told them, “Draw some out now and take it to the headwaiter.” So they took it.

And when the headwaiter tasted the water that had become wine, without knowing where it came from — although the servers who had drawn the water knew —, the headwaiter called the bridegroom and said to him, “Everyone serves good wine first, and then when people have drunk freely, an inferior one; but you have kept the good wine until now.”

Jesus did this as the beginning of His signs at Cana in Galilee and so revealed His glory, and His disciples began to believe in Him.

There’s a lot in this scripture to capture the significance of this vocation of marriage. In God’s providence, He chose to manifest His Divine identity in the context of a wedding. In the Old Testament, God refers to His covenant with His chosen people as a spousal relationship. Isaiah refers to our God and our maker, as the Bridegroom.

God has a love for His people as a husband has a love for His wife. And Jesus came to bring about this mystical marriage between our humanity and God.

Byzantine marriage (Wiki Commons)

This Mass is going to be for the couples who are here present, number one. Two, for those of you who are married but your spouse isn’t present, I invite you also to renew your covenant with your spouse who is back at home. And as the couples here renew their vows, hold your hand with your wedding ring and renew your vows with your spouse. Invite the Lord to bring healing into your relationship, if there is need of emotional healing, forgiveness, reconciliation, or of resurrection in your relationship with your spouse.

The third intention is for those who are widowed; pray for the eternal rest of your spouse that they may rest in the peace of God. The fourth intention is for those who are divorced. Love your enemies and your persecutors, whether they’re remarried or not. Some divorces are really traumatic and hard, so pray for healing. In some divorces, you just divorce as friends and you go your separate ways, and you have a friendship for the sake of the children. Pray for your ex-spouse, but pray especially for your children because they experience the effects of the divorce differently than you do.

And fifth, for those who are single and are still open to the possibility of marriage: if that is God’s divine will for you, pray that God will bring the right person in your life, the person that He knows will be the best for His plan for your happiness. For those who are called to the single life, and didn’t want to have a single life, who wanted to be married but never found the right person –pray for the peace of acceptance because God’s vocation of love is ever alive in your life.

Pray for the acceptance in your life, knowing that you are not any less lovable in God’s eyes. You’re not in any way less than those who are called to marriage. Pray for that acceptance in discovering God’s vocation of love for you because God needs you to flourish in the gift of love that you have to offer, whatever it may be.

Pray for the acceptance that ‘Yes, God has chosen me for a vocation of love and it doesn’t mean that I am any less qualified for marriage than anyone else, but that God needs me where I am, and where I’ve been planted.’ Pray for the acceptance to grieve for the fact that ‘I may not have been able to be married and be a parent.’ Grieve this gift of experience that you may be free to live the gift of where you are called to now.

As we celebrate the Eucharist, and as these couples renew their covenant, let us renew our covenant, first and foremost, to God because He is the love of all loves and the only love of our lives that is important.

Those who are married know that to love is a battle. Sometimes, those who are married wish they weren’t married, and those who aren’t married wish that they were. We’re always admiring the ones on the other side. We hear from the scripture that love is a battle. It’s not easy and we need God’s grace.

And ultimately it’s God’s love that is the only love that does not disappoint. As human beings, we are so flawed and broken that we make mistakes. Inevitably, we will let down those who rely upon us. There is no perfect person and we have to learn to be comfortable with the imperfect, to accept the weakness and to find grace in the midst of it.

It is with faith that we celebrate love, especially the love of God who is the center of all of our lives.

Photo Credit: Lorelei Low, ocds.  (Cana 2018)

Father Robert Elias, OCD: Epiphany and the Mystery of Faith

Edward Burne Jones (1904) Wiki Commons

The Mystery of Faith is said after the consecration, after the words of Christ during the Last Supper: ‘For this is the Chalice of My Blood, of the new and eternal Covenant: the Mystery of faith: which shall be shed for you and for many unto the remission of sins. As often as ye shall do these things, ye shall do them in remembrance of me.’

The Mysterium Fidei is said during the Eucharist because the mystery of who God is — is most communicated in Jesus Christ as the sacrament of God. He is made flesh  through the Eucharist, which most perfectly provides, and makes available His gifts for us. Every epiphany is an epiphany of a manifestation of God.

According to Saint Paul the mystery has been revealed to us in God’s divine nature, and He has shared this mystery with us through faith.

We cannot fully grasp the significance of ‘God made man.’ It takes an epiphany to recognize that God was like me – human and suffering. He assumed poverty in order to elevate me. As cradle Catholics we need an epiphany to discover the greatness of that truth.

On this Feast of the Epiphany, this is my challenge for you – that you be awakened by the Holy Spirit to know the story of your soul. Recall the wonders of God’s presence in your life.

What were the stars that brought you here? Where did you encounter God? Nature, a crisis, family relationships, trauma, unemployment – all of these and every circumstance could have been instruments in your life to reveal the Star of Bethlehem. Jesus came to show us how to find His light amidst the darkness and irreparable brokenness.

Some wounds are beyond remedy because a person is not open to God’s healing; faith is stuck in a box, and God’s healing can only do so much in these situations.

The recognition of God’s revelation is a supernatural gift. It is not usually seen with our eyes, but something we experience in our heart of hearts. And to see this light, we need to be obedient.

We know very little about the Three Kings who visited Jesus. At some point, they recognized a stirring from God to seek something greater than themselves. This desire sparked a new seeking, which led to a new finding of a treasure of wisdom better than they had ever known.

The lives of the Wise Men is the message. They had no idea what they would find for God’s presence is amidst the unexpected. Yet they were obedient to each inspiration – the small tasks. When the Magi found the King of Kings, they found Him in total poverty. God’s wisdom is manifest to us in the most unexpected people, places, and circumstances – far from ideal – but God is waiting for you there.

God stirs us in our souls. We experience the clarity of God’s call by faith, and not by certainty – even when we don’t feel His presence, and only have an assurance. Only after having gone through our experiences of darkness are we able to look back and understand. And this epiphany and understanding usually comes through an encounter.

If you don’t know why you’re doing something, but you know that you are being obedient to that small inspiration, you will find His presence, despite the discomfort or awkwardness you may experience – through an unexpected event or person.

This epiphany brings about conversion, a new birth of understanding of who I am and who He is.

Whatever your work or home situation, no matter how far from perfect it is, that is the very context that God uses to bring light and holiness. Your life is the best context to sanctify you, though it may seem imperfect to you. The people who are most difficult for you are the very people He has chosen to challenge your self-love to purify and refine you.

That is wisdom – to allow our perception to be changed and to keep our eyes on the star.

What gives us strength in faith? – Scripture and the Eucharist.Throughout the story of your soul, God has used scripture passages to speak to you in different stages of your life. And in the Blessed Sacrament, we find an anchor of refuge, hope, and assurance of God’s will for ourselves. We renew our attitude and determination. God has also placed certain saints in your lives to walk with you — an image or picture of that saint can inspire a deep and holy longing in you.

At the end of their pilgrimage to Beauty, the Three Wise men prostrated themselves and offered the Christ Child gold for His kingship, frankincense for His deity, and myrrh for His death.During this Epiphany, we are called to offer all our gifts and treasures so that we may discover who we are before God, that we may be enlightened in our understanding of His work in us.

The treasure of your crosses, the people in your life – give all that you are to Him so that He can give Himself to you in exchange. And He will always give more in return, for the more a person must suffer, the more that person will receive.

Know the story of your soul and seek your Star of Bethlehem.

NOTE: I have added as a permanent side link, The Daily Examen, adapted by the Carmelite Sisters of the Most Sacred Heart of Los Angeles, to help you daily seek your Star of Bethlehem. – TL

Upcoming important dates and links

Walk for Life 2019, San Francisco with the Carmelite Friars of Mount Saint Josephs Monastery, San Jose.

Meeting Place:
Millbrae BART Station
200 North Rollins Road
Millbrae, CA 94030

When: Saturday, January 26, 2019

Meeting Time:
11:00 AM sharp – Mt. St. Joseph Monastery
12:21 Train (12:55 AM arrival at Civic Center)

The walk officially starts at 1:30 PM. WFL San Francisco route Civic Center Plaza along Market Street (2miles) toward Justin Herman Plaza/Ferry Bld.

Please make sure to give yourself enough time to park and buy tickets at the BART Station. We will be dining at In/Out Burger in Milbrae following the Walk.

Questions? Please contact missmaryann7@yahoo.com

The Carmelite Sisters of the Most Sacred Heart of Los Angeles

have put together a beautiful Daily Examen here.

 

Father Robert Elias, OCD: Christmas 2018 Homily

Click on this Facebook link  (belonging to Lorelei Low, ocds) to have a glimpse of the Jerusalem Pilgrimage 2018 with Father Robert Elias

A reading from the Holy Gospel according to John

In the beginning was the Word,and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God.3 All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be.What came to be 4through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race;the light shines in the darkness,and the darkness has not overcome it.6 A man named John was sent from God. 7 He came for testimony,to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him.f 8He was not the light, but came to testify to the light. 9 The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.10He was in the world,and the world came to be through him, but the world did not know him. 11He came to what was his own, but his own people did not accept him. 12 But to those who did accept him he gave power to become children of God, to those who believe in his name, 13 who were born not by natural generation nor by human choice nor by a man’s decision but of God.

14And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us,and we saw his glory,the glory as of the Father’s only Son,full of grace and truth. 15 John testified to him and cried out, saying, “This was he of whom I said,l ‘The one who is coming after me ranks ahead of me because he existed before me.’” 16From his fullness we have all received, grace in place of grace,* 17because while the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.m 18No one has ever seen God. The only Son, God,who is at the Father’s side, has revealed him.

Deir Rafat, Shrine of Our Lady of Palestine 2018

Merry Christmas everybody!

Jesus wants to provide something new for us, an unprecedented experience of Christmas through the present of His presence. That is what Christmas is all about.

And in Christ, we can be open to experience the beauty of life.  We are meant to discover each of our lives as gift. In  fact, the most important gift that you can give, more than anything you can buy –is yourself.

When we give the gift of our life, we begin to experience a new birth of love, which is what God desires for us to dawn within ourselves, the rebirth of knowing your worth to the beauty of God’s love for you. This is the glory of Christmas.

To discover all of life, beginning with your own life story is a gift. The good times and the bad – all have purpose and value. The Author of life knows the story of your soul better than you do, and He more than anyone else is able to speak to that secret part of our hearts that you may not be able to communicate, even to the people you love most. God alone can reach into the area, of who we really are and He wants to reveal to you how much you are worth to Him.

He was born for you.

God  is the light, the love, and the logic that is at the heart of all life, the artist who designed all that exists; he  is poet who spoke into being all beauty and meaning and He was born for me, for you.

We have to personalize Christmas, not just as something of the past, but as something personal and of the present. Jesus was born for me, as if I were the only person he wanted to be born for because he wants to be born in my life. He wants my heart to come to a new birth.

This rebirth is  a matter of knowing our own worth, but our true value and self-worth cannot be found from the outside world. What we do for a living, what we own, or what we look like – these are not the basis and foundation of the worth of our lives.  Our importance can be found in more than what we buy from the department store, how much money we make, or the expensiveness of our gifts. Our true value and self worth must not be found in our accomplishment, our social status, or how we dress.

Our worth is found from the inside.

Each of us possesses in the secret recesses of our hearts a greatness beyond which there can be nothing greater; we all have that inside of us. And faith is the vital link that connects us to the supreme good that is inside of us – God.

God does not want to be elusive or distant from our human experience. In Christmas, God wants us to know the wondrous newness of His presence in our midst, mysteriously at work in each of us.  God with usImmanuel. He loves us above and beyond our shortcomings and failures, and beyond our own sins and brokenness.

When God’s Word comes to birth in us, our world is no longer the same. When the Holy Spirit brings us to new birth and awakes us to the fact that Christ was born for me; when that truth comes to birth in our heart; when knowing Jesus comes from the head to the inside of who I am, then we can be awakened to a sense of wonder to what Christmas is about.

We will awaken to the radical awareness of God’s grace and the new horizons of beauty in what our hearts are made for. This Christmas, we are called to be open to God’s gift to us, the present of His Presence, which He wants us to receive and personally experience.

In His Son, God is a free gift of love – second to none. He wants us to receive what Jesus possesses in Himself – love’s pure light, beyond which nothing can be greater. God alone can help us savor this love’s pure light, which already lives in us and He desires to grow in us.

Jesus’s birth as our savior reminds us that He came to free us from slavery, the slavery of our tendency to glorify ourselves more than the Almighty. He came to set me free from anything that tries to suppress my true self. The Creator became incarnate to set me free from living a life other than the one I was created for and set into the world for; to set me free from anything that is unworthy of my dignity as a human being created in His beauty – from negativity and everything unworthy of my destiny to share in God’s eternity.

The harmony, the goodness and glory that is the source, the summit and the center of the universe today is sent into the world to reveal in our lives God’s Word, who seeks to be made flesh again, to come alive in our lives in a way that is fresh and relevant to each of us.

Christmas is about the gift of life continuously being given, and experiencing a new birth of what it means to love. This birth of our self-worth that Christmas represents by the birth of Jesus expresses our common cry to arise from being a mess to becoming a masterpiece; from agony to glory, from depression to passion, from pain to purpose; for it is better the pain than to remain the same.

And the context of this metamorphosis is the raw realities of our human existence, the physical, psychological, social, moral and emotional dimensions of life. Life in all its beauty and brokenness abiding as one. Our hearts, scars, and resilience, fragility, and fervor are our unifying experiences.

The compassion of Christ has the power to transform poison into medicine and wounds into wellsprings of healing; for in love’s army, only the wounded can heal. In the words of Gandhi, our struggles develop our strengths. When we go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is the strength of love, and where there is love, there is life and light.

St. Francis of Assissi said that all the darkness of the world cannot extinguish the light of a single candle so I can do more good if I ignite a candle than curse the darkness and scandal. That candle  can give pleasure to a single person by a single act of love, one step, one smile, one day at a time.

We are to shine right here and now, where we are, in the sphere of influence we have been strategically placed, suited and destined to sow and to reap, to plant the seeds of peace, and to enjoy the fruits of freedom.

What is more important is not so much our work, but the love that it is done.  What matters is not what we have, but who we become and who we are for others. Our greatness lies not in remaking the world, as in remaking ourselves. And the fact is we can’t remake ourselves by ourselves. We need someone greater than ourselves. That is why Jesus came to the world as a child – that we may no longer be the same.

May we be remade with Him, in Him, and through Him in what it means to love like Him. As we celebrate Christmas, may we be open to God’s presence working in us, speaking to us, breathing with us, and above all, loving in us.

Merry Christmas. May you be the reason someone experiences love this season. God bless you.