Homily - Sunday 06/19/2016 - Father's Day - Who do they say that I am?

Homily - Sunday 

June 19, 2016

Who do people say that I am

Luke 9:18-24  (Readings)

Deacon David Lewis

Saint Charles Catholic Church, Imperial Beach / San Diego, CA

(It was over 85 degrees in the church the Sunday this was delivered, so I tried to keep it brief)

With today being Father’s day, it is a bit bitter-sweet because on one hand I just got back from having a great vacation at my childhood home in upstate NY, where I was able to spend some time with my family, and got to spend some time camping and fishing with my Dad, and little brother, just like old times. But on the other hand my wife’s family got together yesterday for a prayer service to celebrate the life of my father-in-law, Gene, who passed away on Father’s day just last year.

            I realize how blessed I am not to have had just one father in my life, but to have had two men, that gave me so much to aspire to. Each indeed has flaws, but both gave me an example of how to live life as an adult male, how to live life as a husband, and how to live life as a father myself. I have tried to follow their good examples, and avoid their short-comings so that I too may one day be looked at as an example to others.

As we read today’s Gospel about Jesus asking his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” It prompted me to ponder a bit “Who is it people say that I am?” … If we were to go around and ask my wife. If we were to ask my son? If we were to ask my co-workers? If we were to ask the homeless in our neighborhood? Our fellow parishioners? Our priests? The clerk at the store? What response would you get?

Who we are, is really a sum of how we interact with other people, good and bad. This last week we have had the task as a nation to heal from a wound of 49 people being killed in a single mass shooting. As we watched the responses on social media, we got to see some examples of how people interact with others. We saw people seeking to blame: blaming outside influences, blaming guns, others blaming the lack of guns, some blaming religion, others blaming the FBI, the police, some blaming homophobia, and some blaming our president. Others however, …. sought out the opportunities to unite and grieve together, forming vigils, creating prayer chains, making memorials, and others took the task to raise funds for victim’s families, so that they could give their loved one’s funerals, or travel to be with the injured. One of the most profound words of unity that I heard this past week was Father Dave Dwyer from the Busted Halo show on Sirius Satellite Radio He was making a point that when we use phrases like “them” and “us”, “those people” and “us”, we divide and that instead we need to be more “WE” and less “THEM.” Father Dave’s reflection challenged us to put those we have separated ourselves from into a sense of “WE” to unite and share in understanding: the pain, the challenges, and the loneliness of being a “THEM”

I guess the challenge Jesus gave us in today’s Gospel is, as Catholics, if that is what people say that we are, we should be reflections of Christ to others, especially in times of need, but indeed at all times. Whether at church, home, work, or the marketplace: we should always be seeking God’s will - what it is God wants us to do in our lives – at all times, just like Jesus did. Instead of seeking blame, seek healing; instead of seeking division, seek unity, instead of fists, seek hugs, and instead of hate, seek love.

We only need to look to Jesus, not to social media, for the right way to live. And as we look at Jesus, and others that reflect Jesus, like my own Father, and father-in-law, and more perfectly the Saints in heaven: their examples will cascade into how we live our lives, how we interact with others, how others see who WE are, and ultimately how we portray Christ to others. 

Homily - Sunday 04/17/2016 - Listening to God's voice

Homily - Sunday 

April 17, 2016

God's voice

John 10 :27-30 (Readings)

Deacon David Lewis

Saint Charles Catholic Church, Imperial Beach / San Diego, CA

            I once heard a guy call in to a radio show. He had a unique gift… he could identify the make and model of a car with surprising accuracy only by hearing the car horn. I hadn’t realized until then that each car horn does make a fairly unique noise if you really know what to listen for. Another woman that called in, she also had a unique talent: she could listen to the tones of the telephone and tell you what number was being pushed. Each number has a unique tone. I was thinking back if I have ever had a similar gift, I it dawned on me. When I was training in the navy I learned morse code, dah dah dit, morse code… as we were training, after learning the basics, they would increase the speed a little faster each time, eventually we would switch from the nice clean dits and dahs, and they would use live signals. The live signals would be masked with static, voices, other communication signals, and even other morse code in the background. It got to the point where listening, or what we called copying morse code, became so second nature that I could hear through all the noise and recognize the morse code I was trying to write down, and if that wasn’t enough, I could lift one side of my headset and carry on a conversation with the person seated next to me. Training, readied   us for the real world, where there are many signals on the air waves, and we had to be able to read the one that was important to the mission.

            Each of these “gifts” if you will require training, you are not born with an ability to identify car horns, you can’t just immediately recognize the tones of a Phone, and I can speak from experience that it wasn’t until I had trained months, hours per day, that I achieved my proficiency in discerning the useful morse code from the other noises.

            In the same way when it comes to recognizing God’s voice in our lives we need to train ourselves, we need to put forth the effort to learn the subtleties to recognize what God is trying to say, to hear him through the other static in our lives. To discern what is God’s voice urging us to do his will, and what are the devil’s false noises drawing us away from God.  Our prayer life takes practice, and through exercising our prayer life , it gets better and more meaningful as we go on.

We shouldn’t wait until we are in distress to pray to God. Our prayers shouldn’t start out with “God I know it’s been a while” followed by requests for God’s intercession into an unfortunate event in our lives: an accident, an illness, or even worse…

Imagine not talking to your loved one for weeks, and then picking up the phone only to ask them to pick you up because you ran out of gas…

We need to pick up the prayer phone and talk to God more often that ... God desires a relationship with us.

You may not have a prayer life, and you’re thinking, if Deacon only knew how uncomfortable I feel when I try to pray… well … God does know how uncomfortable you may be, but I am sure he is comfortable, absolutely comfortable with working with you through the training wheel phase of your prayer life, if that is where you are at.  You can ask those that have graduated up to the ten speed stage of their prayer life, that just like riding a bike it got much easier once they had done it a few times.

So when we pray, what should we do? First, our prayer life is most successful when we can put ourselves in a quiet place, like here among the quiet sanctity of the Church, right here in front of God in the tabernacle, or at home in front of an altar of blessed objects of devotion, or quietly in a chair in a room by yourself, or … even kneeling at your bedside still works. We need to remove those things that normally distract us, so turn off the cel phone, shut off the tv, turn off the computer, maybe let the family know you wish to have no interruptions, or have even have them join you.

Second be comfortable, if kneeling is hurting your knees, don’t kneel, if you are hot open the door, turn on a fan, and get some ice water.

            Then pray… there are lots of ways to pray…

            We can listen to the Word of God through Scripture… one way is by using Lectio Divina, or divine reading, It is just four steps: First, you grab your Bible, sit down and read a short passage. You might want to try something from the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John., or even the Sunday or Daily readings. After the first time reading it, meditate on a short part of that, or even just a single word. Repeating it over and over, letting it settle deep in your heart. Second:  Be attentive to what touches your heart as you sit and meditate on that phrase or word. Third: Respond, with a prayer of praise, thanksgiving, or petition. Lastly, just be in the presence of God allowing Him to speak to you in the silence of your prayer. Listening for God’s voice

            We can also pray our traditional prayers, the Our Father, the Rosary, Prayer of Saint Francis, The Prayer of St Michael, or the Angelus … meditating…  not just reciting… but allowing ourselves time to digest the prayer, to examine these prayers word by word, pausing to think over how we can live out the message of these prayers more fully. Listening for God’s voice

            And of course we can just sit down and have a conversation with God. Talk to him like you are talking to a friend. Think about all the things that you are grateful for, give God praise for being your shepherd, give him thanks for all the graces and gifts in your life. And then, if needed, ask for intercession in your life, His guidance, and his blessings on those things in your life you are working through. And then listen for God’s voice.

            I’ll warn you now… you may not like the answer, it may not be what you expect… you may pray for a way for God to use the Church to bring you closer to your wife…. The next thing you know you are contemplating five years of formation to be an Ordained Deacon… trust me! it happens. Your prayers may even seem to go answered, in which case I will refer you to the country legend Garth Brooks, and his song unanswered prayers, and how in his high school years he prayed and prayed that God would make this certain girl his mate… long story short, many years later he is at a high school football game with his wife and runs into that old high school flame… the way he remembered her just didn’t seem the same… Thank God for unanswered prayers.

            One thing I have learned about listening for God’s voice, is that when I get the answer I don’t want, when I get a “no”, or we get a “maybe later”… it’s because God has something better in store for us. God is a good shepherd, He does not want us to hunger or thirst. He wants to lead us to springs of life-giving water, and wipe away the tears from our eyes.

            With practice we will learn His voice, to pick it out from among the noises in our lives. God is speaking to us in many ways, we need only to listen for God’s voice, and to follow where it leads.        

Homily - Sunday 02/21/2016 - Transfiguration - Spending time with the one's you love

Homily - Sunday 

February 21, 2016

Transfiguration - Spending Time With the One's You Love

Luke 9:28B-36 (Readings)

Deacon David Lewis

Saint Charles Catholic Church, Imperial Beach / San Diego, CA

Today’s Gospel story reminded me of the recent confirmation retreat we just went on. There were the thirty plus confirmation students, about a dozen core team high school students, and a handful of us adult chaperones, about fifty in all. Like James, John and Peter we went “up the mountain” also to get away from the world to retreat and be with Jesus, and even though there was a desire to be overcome by sleep like Gospel mentioned, once we got there, sleep seemed less necessary. And also like James Peter and John, for many of us on the retreat, how we saw Jesus in our lives went through a transformation as well.

That transformation is what is most magnificent about the retreat… that is - the kids go up to the retreat with years of catechism behind them. They have been learning ABOUT Jesus for many years. They had a picture of what Jesus was like, had learned about the many miracles he performed, they know of Jesus’ love for them, and they were taught of his sacrifice that He made on the cross, so that we may have forgiveness… but with all that learning, with all they KNOW about Jesus, many have never had an ENCOUNTER with Jesus, many did not have a relationship with Jesus... And I imagine that is the way it is with a lot of us Catholics, we KNOW ABOUT Jesus, but don’t have a relationship with him.

We wouldn’t do this with anything else in our lives, we wouldn’t research a someone we found attractive, asking their friends their favorite color, food, and tv show, we wouldn’t go finding out what sports they like, what instrument they play, and what foreign languages they speak… and then go around and call them a loved one, that first would be very creepy… but we would need to be in a relationship with someone before we call them a loved one… but yet we often do that with God… we go to Mass each Sunday, we may pick up our Bible at home on occasion… we might even take a class about our faith or attend a presentation now and then, but when it comes to visiting the adoration chapel, or sitting alone praying in a quiet part of the world, or even going on retreat, we often fail to do it as often as we should. And for some of us when it comes to making sacrifices for God, we may fall short, we continue to put other things in front of God that block us for experiencing him fully.

I think Jesus was on to something when he went up the mountain to pray, allowing Peter, James, John, and himself to get away from the others, to pray, to rest perhaps, and to just be with Jesus, to experience him more fully.

I encourage you to take a retreat. Whether it is a weekend long or a week long.

It might be a retreat with a retreat leader or even a team, or a retreat that you follow through meditations in a book. Whether it is an active retreat with events and activities, or a quiet contemplative, meditative retreat with lots of deep thought.  They all can be effective ways of deepening your relationship with God.

You might not be up for a long retreat, I understand, maybe a day trip to the woods, or a hike along a trail may be all you need to give you the solitude to remove the distractions of life and be alone with Jesus. And you don’t necessarily need to be alone either, you can do it with others: My wife and I went to a park and just sat under a shade tree and read some reflections out of a book we purchased from a Catholic bookstore. Just the two of us - and Jesus, Cel phones were left in the car– and we just spent the time getting to know Jesus better, together.

Father Jim has made it super easy too, there is a Lenten retreat coming up in two weeks on Saturday morning on March 5^th in the hall, you could take some time out for that.

Maybe you don’t even need to call it a retreat. Maybe it only needs to be as simple as gathering the family, turning off the hand-held gadgets, the TV, and the radio, and cleaning off the table of all the old mail, putting out the plates, and silverware, and having a proper dinner together, starting with grace, complete with face to face real-live interaction with your family. A time to reconnect with them, and getting to know them better.

Just this last Thursday I saw a pretty profound video ( VIDEO HERE ) posted on Facebook. It showed couples, mothers and fathers walking in and sitting down to be interviewed one couple at a time, they were asked: “Who, living or dead, would you like to have dinner with?” Multiple couples were asked. The answers were all over the place, one wife said Justin Bieber to whom the husband balked and said no way is he coming into our house, others said Marilyn Monroe and Jimmy Hendrix, others went deeper, thinking about people that made a difference, one mentioning Nelson Mandela for example. Take a moment and think who would you want to have dinner with? 

Perhaps you would answer Jesus, you could have your own little Last Supper, or perhaps a grandfather you never got to know who could share some of the great stories about your family history with you. It really would be quite an opportunity to sit with whomever you wished.

Or … you could follow the wisdom of a child…

You see, the video then jumps to some more interviews, this time the it’s children of the same couples. They too were asked the same question: “If you could have dinner with anyone, living or dead, who would it be.” This time the answers weren’t that varied, time and again, the theme was the same: One group of siblings said “The whole family, you know the extended family”, another child asked, “Does it have to be a celebrity? I would like to have dinner with my Mom and Dad”, and yet another replied “Mom and Dad, because they ask us how our day was, and they also tell us how their day went.” Over and over the children just wanted to have dinner with family…

Lately I have been binge watching all the past episodes of “Blue Bloods” with Tom Selleck. Its’ got a good foundation in family values. One of the things that happens every episode is the family gets together every Sunday for dinner, around the table, they start with grace, and while they are eating, the conversations go on about the struggles they are having at work, the moral questions they face on the job and at school, the good deeds done, and those done to them.

You see gathering around a table to break bread together is a great way to put the world aside for a moment, and get to know those you love better. While dinner is a great way to get to know your family better, a retreat is a great way to put the world aside and get to know God better.

So using Jesus’ example of taking those that were closest to Him up a mountain to pray: I encourage you to take the time to get to know your loved ones better, not by knowing about them, but by getting into a deeper relationship with them, experiencing them face to face with no distractions.

Homily - Sunday 01/17/2016 - Wedding at Cana - The Best it yet to come

Homily - Sunday 

January 17, 2016

Wedding at Cana - The Best is Yet to Come

John 2:1-11 (Readings)

Deacon David Lewis

Saint Charles Catholic Church, Imperial Beach / San Diego, CA

A wedding day is often a day many brides have given great thought to for a long time. It is a day that can have a massive amount of preparation and resources put into it: With preparing the couple: With the formation and instruction of the couple by the church. Preparing the church: Flowers, musician, choir, groomsmen, and bridesmaids. Preparing the bride: hair nails, makeup, and of course the dress. Preparing for the reception: the centerpieces, the table assignments, the food, the cake, the speeches, the DJ, and even the drinks.  It is indeed a day that requires great preparation, and it is all worthwhile, as it is the day that celebrates the marriage of a husband and wife. It is a day to celebrate the new couple uniting as one. It is the birth of a new family.  But despite all the preparations, things can go wrong. No matter how well planned, power sometimes goes out, catering trucks sometimes break down, singers get strep throat, ring bearers are unpredictable, and cakes can tip over. Sometimes there are other surprises. 

A couple of years ago Maroon 5, a popular music band, came out with a song, Sugar. And For the video they went from wedding venue to wedding venue in Los Angeles, setting up and surprising the guests by playing a few songs at each of the wedding receptions. Could you imagine your wedding being crashed by such a popular and well known band? Unfortunately, when something so spectacular happens, it takes the focus off the real reason for the celebration - the couple.  And the memories become less about the vows exchanged, and the love in their eyes for each other, and instead, the one event, the band crashing the wedding, becomes the one stand-out thing everyone remembers. 

Today’s Gospel reading, speaks of a wedding whose name of the newly wed couple we do not know. We do however have record of a very significant event that happened, that with no doubt would be talked about long after, in fact we are talking about it today, some 2000 years later. Of course that event is Jesus’ first miracle. The changing of water into wine. The beginning of his public ministry.

We know of only a few of the people involved in the wedding. Of course as I mentioned we have the unnamed bride and groom, Jesus, and the disciples were invited, and it mentions Mary, Jesus mother is there as well. As the story unfolds, we are also made aware of the presence of the servers, and headwaiter. 

One of these people really stands out to me, and that is Mary. I don’t know if you have ever been witness to an accident, or some other tragedy, but it seems that sometimes the crowd just stands around after the accident, as though helpless, and it isn’t until one person takes action, or calls for others to take action that the crowd begins to help, and so it was with Mary. I am sure others noticed that the wine was running out, but Mary, with her motherly instincts, with her love being focused on others as mothers often do, realized something needed to be done. 

And when Mary notices the wine is out, she goes to Jesus, like we do, in prayer. She didn’t go to the headwaiter, she went to Jesus and interceded for the young couple, asking Jesus for help on their behalf. 

It was Mary saying to Jesus, “they have no wine.” It was Mary stepping forward to call others to action that put the solution into motion, and she did it by going to Jesus. And I am sure, she doesn’t get the answer she wanted either. She certainly would have much rather heard her son Jesus say “Sure Mom, I’ll take care of it.” Instead Jesus responds, “Woman, how does your concern affect me? My hour has not yet come.” but she trusted in God anyway, and once again, called those around her to action, insisting that the headwaiter do what Jesus tells them. Showing her true faith in God, faith that God understands our concerns, and that our concerns are God’s concerns. 

So often we forget that prayer is a viable option, that we can go to Jesus with our concerns. We can, through our love for others, see the needs of others and ask for God’s intervention. We need to listen to what Jesus tells us. He may not give you the answer you are looking for, his answer may make you uncomfortable or require you to take more action, but we need to trust none-the-less, we need to do as Mary said and “Do whatever he tells you.” 

 Pope Francis reflecting on this reading in a homily once said “Wine is a sign of happiness, love and plenty. How many of our adolescents and young people sense that there is no longer any of that wine to be found in their homes? How many women, sad and lonely, wonder when love left, when it slipped away from their lives? How many elderly people feel left out of family celebrations, cast aside and longing each day for a little love, from their sons and daughters, their grandchildren, their great grandchildren? This lack of this “wine” can also be due to unemployment, illness and difficult situations which our families around the world may experience. Mary is not a “demanding” mother, nor a mother-in-law who revels in our lack of experience, our mistakes, and the things we forget to do. Mary, quite simply, is a Mother! She is there, attentive and concerned. It is gratifying to hear this: Mary is a Mother!”

And as Pope Francis went his homily on to further reflect: “All this began because “they had no wine”. It could all be done because a woman – the Virgin Mary – was attentive, left her concerns in God’s hands and acted sensibly and courageously. But there is a further detail, the best was yet to come: everyone went on to enjoy the finest of wines. And this is the good news: the finest wines are yet to be tasted; for families, the richest, deepest and most beautiful things are yet to come. The time is coming when we will taste love daily, when our children will come to appreciate the home we share, and our elderly will be present each day in the joys of life. The finest of wines is expressed by hope, this wine will come for every person who stakes everything on love. And the best wine is yet to come, in spite of all the variables and statistics which say otherwise. The best wine will come to those who today feel hopelessly lost. Say it to yourselves until you are convinced of it. Say it to yourselves, in your hearts: the best wine is yet to come. Whisper it to the hopeless and the loveless. Have patience, hope, and follow Mary’s example, pray, open your heart, because the best wine is yet to come. God always seeks out the peripheries, those who have run out of wine, those who drink only of discouragement. Jesus feels their weakness, in order to pour out the best wines for those who, for whatever reason, feel that all their jars have been broken.”

So as we go through our life, and it seems, that despite all of our preparations, no matter how detailed we had our life planned out, when things seem to be going wrong and we get low on wine, when we feel the absence of love, happiness and abundance, when are feeling despair, we can go to Jesus, asking for His help just like Mary, because there is hope that the finest wine is yet to come. Because despite the situations we may find ourselves in, Jesus offers us great hope that there is an abundance of the best, yet to come, that the good wine has indeed been saved for last.