Homily: Understanding the Mass Part I

[00:00:00] Good morning. Welcome to St. Mike's. It's good to have you. Welcome. So some of you may know that human beings as we have existed thus far, we've been around for about more or less six million years in some form or another. And that seems like a lot. But the truth is compared to the fact that the universe has been around for about 14 billion years, that's really

[00:00:32] not that long actually. Six million years. We've had human beings more or less in our form, so to speak, for about a hundred thousand years roughly. Even going back to our earliest days as human beings, people understood very well that separation from the community, separation from the group, from our families, whatever, usually meant death, believe it or not.

[00:01:00] Because we would stick together, for instance, if there's bad weather, horrible weather, if there's a threat, animals, tribes, even for food, we would come together. And that meant survival.

[00:01:14] And sociologists have said really it's not until just recently in human history that people isolate more. And of course, in their words, this has led largely to half of the United States admitting that they suffer from loneliness and some form of depression at some point.

[00:01:35] Interesting. Interesting. Half of every American. It's a lot. I mean, every animal in the world, right? So the elephants, the fish, the birds, the snuffleupagus, right?

[00:01:48] They're always together. And there's a reason for that. We need other people. We do. In our own time, it may not mean physical death, but it may well mean emotional or spiritual death to isolate. We need other people. We do. Introverts, extroverts, everything in between.

[00:02:09] Recently, I mean, recently, I was talking to a woman from our parish, and she said to me, she said, you know, Fr. Ben, there's one thing I don't understand about women. And I'm like, just one. No, I didn't say that. I said, I said, what? And she said, you know, I don't understand as a woman why women don't work more together. She said, they're often jealous and competitive and talk about each other behind their back. Like, why don't they work more together?

[00:02:40] They get further. I can say this, though. Generally speaking for men, no offense, gentlemen. If a guy has problems or challenges or they're stressed, they often see going to talk to somebody as a sign of weakness. It's actually the exact opposite. So it can be all over our face. It's obvious.

[00:03:06] Our wife, what's wrong, honey? Nothing. It's fine. We're the fine family. There's nothing wrong. Really? Because it's all over your face. No, I'm fine. Just allergic to talking about it. Why don't we work more together? We're better together. We should, really.

[00:03:29] You know, as Catholics, what brings us together is what happens right here at this table, the Mass. Mass. What does the word Mass mean? Ite misa es. Go out. It's the last thing the priest or the deacon says. Go out. Do something with it, right? So a lot of Catholics, we've been coming to Mass our whole life, but we don't really understand what happens here. Did you know that there's two parts of the Mass and two altars in the church?

[00:03:58] Did you know that? I'm not making this up. There's two parts of the Mass. What are the two parts of the Mass? Liturgy of the Word, which goes from the beginning of the Mass until the end of the petitions. And then we start what's called the Liturgy of the Eucharist. What does the word Eucharist mean again? Thanksgiving. Okay, so, and that goes to the end of the Mass. And then we have the two altars.

[00:04:27] We have the altar of the Eucharist and the altar of the Word, a.k.a. the Ambo. Interesting. Imagine two lungs breathing together. Father, that's the Mass, yeah? So, let's go through it very briefly. Priests and deacons come up. We walk around the altar. What's the first thing that we do? Big smooch on the altar. Why do we do that? By the way, have you noticed we kiss the Gospel too? Why do we do that?

[00:04:58] I don't know, Father. It's a weird Catholic thing. I don't know. It's just we don't really know. Because we are offering adoration on behalf of the people to God. His Word and His body. Then we go over. We begin, Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Maybe you've heard me say where this comes from. What do we have up here that we learn with? Our mind, our brain. Help me to learn my faith. What do we have here that we pray with?

[00:05:28] Our heart. Help me to pray my faith. When Jesus was going to Calvary, where did He carry His cross? On His shoulders. So we are saying, help me to learn my faith. Help me to pray my faith. Help me to live my faith. Jesus says, you want to be My disciple? Wonderful. Take up your cross and follow Me.

[00:05:54] So, then we begin what's called the penitential rite. The penitential rite. And Catholics believe that the penitential rite, that's where we say, Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy. We believe that removes all venial sins. In order to remove mortal sins, what do we have to have? Confession. Jesus, in John chapter 20, He gives to the apostles. Whose sins you retain, they'll retain. Whose sins you forgive, they'll forgive.

[00:06:24] By the way, side note. We hear confessions here in this church. About 90% of the people that come to confession here speak Spanish. You know what that means? It means all of us must be saints. Amazing. Wow. That's incredible. Okay, just a humble thought. Maybe our English-speaking community could learn from our Spanish brothers and sisters.

[00:06:51] If it's been a minute since you went to confession, you might want to come. Priests go to confession too, by the way. So then we have the Gloria. Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to people of good will. Where does that come from? Hmm. Christmas night. The angels appear to the shepherd. Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to people of good will. Then, of course, we sit.

[00:07:21] We have the first reading from the Old Testament. 46, 27, 73 total. 46 books old, 27 new, 73 total. Why does the Catholic Bible have seven more books? In the 16th century, Martin Luther removed seven books. He actually removed more than that. But to this day, we have seven more books than our non-Catholics friends do. Right? So we have the Old Testament.

[00:07:51] The New Testament is the fulfillment, not the negation of, the fulfillment of the old. We have the New Testament. Then we have the Psalms. Who wrote the Psalms? King David. About a thousand years before Jesus was ever born. By the way, when Jesus was dying on the cross, he's quoting the Psalms. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Then, of course, we have the New Testament. Right?

[00:08:19] Usually from Paul, as we hear today. The Acts of the Apostles, Hebrews. Then we have the Gospels. So what was the first of the four Gospels that was written? Anybody ever heard of the Gospels? Yeah. Okay. The first one that was written. Mark. Shortest. First one. John Mark, as he was known, was the secretary of our first pope. 267 popes ago.

[00:08:48] And so he wrote the shortest of the Gospels. Then we have Luke and Matthew. And finally, we have who? John. Then, of course, everyone is seated. And we have a nice, long, boring homily from Father Ben. Who can tell me what is the difference between a sermon and a homily? Hmm. In brief, a homily is shorter, a sermon is longer. Aren't you happy you got a homily?

[00:09:19] Okay. There's the joke with parish priests. Parish priests often joke, what's the difference between older parishioners and younger parishioners? Older parishioners want a warm church and a short homily. Younger parishioners want a cold church and a short homily. Okay. Come on. Chop, chop. Father, let's go. So then, of course, we have the creed. What year was our creed, our Nicene creed written that we profess every Sunday?

[00:09:49] 325. The year 325. By the way, one of the people that were there in Nicaea, modern-day Turkey, when they wrote this, was St. Nicholas of Myrna, a.k.a. Santa Claus. So Santa Claus helped write this creed that we say every Sunday, okay? It was a big deal at the time, in case you didn't know this, because we had many bishops and priests that fell into what was called Arianism.

[00:10:20] Arius was a priest who said, can you believe it, that Jesus was not divine. Many bishops taught this. This is why in the creed it says, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, one in being with the Father, as if to pound at home. He's divine. This is the center of everything we are. We are nothing without this.

[00:10:47] Or as Vatican II said, the source and the summit of our whole existence. Right? One of the things that gets our non-Catholic friends in trouble is they don't know how to accurately interpret Scripture. Some interpret it literally. Some interpret it not. And for us as Catholics, there are times we interpret it literally and sometimes allegorically. John chapter 6, my flesh is true food, my blood is true drink.

[00:11:15] Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no life within you. We interpret that literally. Matthew's Gospel, Jesus says, do not think that I've come to bring peace. I've not come to bring peace. I've come to bring the sword. How do we understand that? So if we take that literally, we think Jesus wants us to kill non-Christians. Clearly that's not what he says.

[00:11:41] So we have to understand what is the allegorical meaning or the literal meaning. We can go off the rails, i.e. 45,000 varieties of Christianity in the world today. Take a drive down Houston Levee Road. This is one of the great blessings of being Catholic, folks. Did anybody see, by the way, Pope Leo in France this past week?

[00:12:07] Almost one million people met this man in the Champs-Élysées. Not bad for a guy that's been in office for about a year. Pretty impressive. And as he has said on that trip, the center of everything we are is the Eucharist. We are nothing without it. So, I'll close with this.

[00:12:32] Did you notice that when we had a month this past month without rain, did you notice your grass getting brown and your plants, everything's dying? Thanks be to God we had some rain. That's exactly what happens to us when we separate ourself from the Eucharist. We start dying on the vine. Jesus says in John's Gospel, I'm the vine. You are the branches.

[00:13:01] A branch cannot live without the vine. Stay close to me. And again, we go back to where we started. We have to have community. This is why we make such a big deal about it here at St. Mike's. Get involved. Get plugged in. Get involved. Because your spiritual and emotional health may well depend on it for each one of us. It's an amazing thing. People can suffer from loneliness and depression for any number of reasons. Maybe it's biological.

[00:13:31] Maybe it's a choice of bad choices. But a lot of it, what I see, is they just don't want to get out of their comfort zone. They've been doing the same thing for so long. And they could impact this in a better way. But it's what they've always done. It's a choice. It's like loading a gun and aiming at your foot and taking a big shot. It doesn't have to be that way, folks. Get involved. Please stand.