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M. Hellinger Feast Days, Jesus Christ, John the Baptist

In Defense of Ordinary Time

Moving back to Ordinary Time after spending the last month or so reflecting on the mystery of the Incarnation and the Second Coming is always shocking in a sense. The parties are over, the lights are down, and here we are, returning to our regular schedules of work and study. This year was great because we had a full week between the Ephipany and the Baptism of the Lord. In fact, its because of this that I felt inclined to reflect on Ordinary Time.

Three things are worth considering: 1) the color green, 2) the ending of the Gospel from the Saturday before the Baptism as a guide for understanding Ordinary Time, 3) the goal of the Christian Life: the divinisation of Man and its relation to the name of the season.

First, green. I love talking about this color, mainly because I never recieved a satisfying answer about it as a kid and once I found one I was so happy (call it my thurst for knowledge taking revenge on ignorance, or just call it a mild OCD, whichever). Anyway, apart from a sad attempt at self-deprecating humor, green is important: it serves as a constant reminder of the nature of Ordinary Time. The best way I’ve come up with to explain this is the example of the Wizard of Oz.

A common misconception is that Oz is green because it is wealthy and ostentatious. I disagree. I argue that it is green because green is the color of hope and fidelity. Oz is Dorthy’s only hope, and she has to remain fixed on it as her end if she is going to get there. The green of Ordinary Time reminds us every time we see it that we have our own “Emerald City,” that place that is our hope: the life of the Trinity. And it is through fidelity to the Person of Christ that we journey onward to it.

The difference in our case is that instead of having a vague idea of a mysterious city that we’ve never been to or heard of before this journey, our journey is in and through a concrete experience of a Person, the God-Man Jesus Christ… but that’s a whole different reflection.

Second, it hit me just this year in the hearing of the Gospel on the Saturday before the Feast of the Baptism. The best guide for what to do with Ordinary Time is found in the words of John the Baptist: He must increase, I must decrease. We get to spend considerable amounts of time each liturgical year reflecting on the mysteries of the Incarnation and the Resurrection. Obviously, those are of the highest importance as they are central to the Christian Life. However, I think there is immense value in spending a substantial amount of time simply living with the Lord. 

The Baptism of Jesus, Church of St. John the Baptist
Bastia, Corsica, France

This living with the Lord in the ordinary (not the play on words I’m looking for, see below) is the way in which the mysteries take on their power in our lives and transform us. If Christians needed a campaign slogan to quickly explain themselves, I think the words of John the Baptist pretty much sum it up. Which leads us to the next point.

Third, if you’ve ever found yourself in Mass and super distracted (I’ve never met a Catholic who is completely foreign to this experience) the thought may have crossed your mind, “what am I doing here right now?” (in these or similar words) With eyes to see, Ordinary Time is giving you an answer.

The Name: Jesus Christ came to order our lives and our love in response to the disorder caused by sin. Ordinary Time is “ordered” time, a time that is arranged. While I don’t think the connection is intuitive, after all the Latin directly reads something like “time through the year,” there is wisdom in the English term, because it expresses what is understood to take place in this time. The process of conversion and conformation to Christ takes time and it requires us to allow him to reorder us, or rather, put us back in order.

Divinization: This year it struck me that Ordinary Time begins after the Baptism of the Lord (it does every year). I do not want to go into interpreting the meaning of the Baptism, rather I just simply want to draw the connection that our own life of conformity to Christ began at our Baptism. What a powerful yearly reminder of the call we received. And if we submit ourselves to the life of the Church as it is lived properly in each distinct season, we find a beautiful unpacking of the mystery of the gift that Baptism is and what God has done for us, all accomplished through faith in Jesus Christ.

This short, awkward time between Christmas and Lent is not just an afterthought or some sort of attempt to “fill in the time” with something as we await a new mystery to unpack in prayer with the Lord. It’s a renewed call to a relationship which reorders us, a call to realize the hope that Christ brings in His Incarnation, fulfilled in his Death and Resurrection, and has its beginning in the very mystery which brought us to Him: Baptism.

Fr. T. Zehr Catholicism, Feast Days, Jesus Christ

3 Gifts Point to the Cross

Why is the feast of the Epiphany such a big deal? Are we simply celebrating the beginning of giving gifts at Christmas? All of the gifts of the wise men indicate some essential aspect of who Jesus Christ is and what role he will take in Salvation history. These gifts, I don’t doubt, were divinely inspired. As wise as these 3 men were, I doubt they had the supernatural vision to foresee what this little baby was going to become!

The first gift is a somewhat normal gift of homage and respect. Gold. This gift is indicative of the royalty and power that Jesus has.  And really, this was the main reason the magi visited Jesus in the first place: to pay their respects to the new KING! Jesus is the King of heaven and earth, so this gift of gold points to Christ’s kingly royalty.

The Second Gift, of Frankincense seems somewhat strange. Frankincense is a type of incense and during the time of Jesus was almost as precious as gold because of its importance. In the Jewish culture, incense was used by the high priests of the Temple to bless and make holy the sacrifices that would be offered to God in the sanctuary. As the smoke of the incense rose up into the air, it was symbolic of their prayers going up into heaven to God. The gift of Frankincense to Jesus foretold the fact that Jesus would be the Great High Priest and would offer the true sacrifice of himself on the cross. 

The Third gift, is even stranger than the second. Myrrh. Myrrh is an oil that was used to anoint the deceased body of someone as they are preparing for burial. Imagine how Mary and Joseph would have felt receiving this gift for their newborn son??? Why would their son need this? Did the wise men think he was sick or was going to die soon? No, it was foretelling the type of life Jesus was going to live – a life of self-sacrifice, death to selfish desires, and obedience to God the Father even to death. The gift of Myrrh was appropriate because Jesus’ greatest act on the earth was his death, and the oil of Myrrh was symbolic of this great gift. 

Even today, we give these same gifts to God through the Church: We fill our sanctuary with beautiful, golden gifts to point to Christ’s Royalty and to adorn his Church with beauty. On High feast days, we light incense and fill the Church with the beautiful smoke to make holy the sacrifice which is offered on the altar.  And we use holy oil to anoint those who are preparing for death in the Anointing of the sick, We anoint with oil those who are dying to their old ways of sin in baptism, and we anoint priests and bishops who will die to their selves in a deeper and true way in their ministry, no longer living for their own passions and desires, but conforming themselves to the life that Christ lived. 

We celebrate on Epiphany more than just 3 guys who went to visit Jesus to give him presents on his birthday. We celebrate a great Foreshadowing of who this small child will become, what he will do, and how he will bring life to each one of us. 

B. Isenbarger Catholicism, Discernment, Jesus Christ, priesthood

Why I still want to be a priest

A group of seminarians from Fort Wayne-South Bend who formally declared their intent to pursue Holy Orders

As 2018 came to an end, and we begin 2019, it was not a glamorous year for the priesthood. In fact, it was one of the most devastating, humiliating, and repulsive years for priests. Through the heinous and unconscionable actions of some clerics, simply wearing a Roman collar in public often gets stares as if I were an accomplice to a network of monstrous criminals. 

And in spite of it all – no, because of it all – I stillwant to be a priest. 

At its core, my vocation is singly centered on one thing – a friendship with Christ. Despite my weakness, sinfulness, and unworthiness, Christ reached down and chose me for His own in the waters of baptism. He has nourished me daily in the Eucharist, strengthened me with His Spirit in Confirmation, healed me with His anointing, and continues to bind up my wounds in the sacrament of penance. 

Friendship, at its deepest roots, changes everything. The experience of friendship is one of the most marvelous experiences of life. I would argue that it often goes beyond human expression. Just take a second and try to explain your best friendship to someone else. It’s pretty difficult, isn’t it? Yet – I do think we can say a few things about friendship.

First, friendship is a real experience borne out of an encounter. When we meet some one who becomes a friend, there is something remarkably different about that encounter. In the highest forms of friendship, the friend sees the other as more important than himself. A perfect example of this is the sacrificial nature of a husband and wife. At some point, both bride and groom recognize that the other was worth laying down their entire life. So, too, did the divine Bridegroom do for me. In spite of my infidelity and sinfulness, Christ still chose to befriend me – at the cost of His own life. 

Secondly, friendship is built upon trust and belief in the other. Once I knew the friendship of Christ, I started to take seriously His promises. While I could do anything with my life, it is hard for me not to be moved by Christ’s words in John 6:53: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” If this is true, and because of my friendship with Christ I believe it is, it seems that the fullness of life is inseparable from Christ’s body and blood in the Eucharist. In other words, without a priest, there is no Eucharist. And without the Eucharist, there is no life. 

This brings me to the final point of friendship – it is life-giving and inviting. Friends, rather than becoming isolated from others, display a certain joy that is full of life and inviting. So, too, with Christ. His friendship has called me out of the darkness of my sin, filled me with the warmth of His love, and given me a desire to share that divine joy with others.

In short, I cannot deny my own lived experience and encounter with Christ. I am a sinner. I am unworthy. Whether in spite of it, or precisely in order to draw me out of it – Christ chose to befriend me. He has given me a new life, brought me abiding joy, and promises me eternal life – and I trust him. Thus, it only seems reasonable to continue to live in this friendship and to invite others to it. For it is only in the friendship that one person becomes like the other. For the priest, this means becoming like the Great High Priest and Savior – Jesus Christ. And only by abiding in this friendship will the face of the priesthood be properly restored. 

So, why do I still want to be a priest? 

Honestly, I’m doing it for a Friend.

M. Hellinger Discernment

The spiritual dimension — living in the presence of a friend

One of my favorite aspects of seminary life is one that took me a long time to get used to: that I live in the same house as Jesus in the Eucharist. This is perhaps one of the easiest parts of seminary life to let become ordinary and to slip under the radar of active thought and appreciation. But the fact remains, while at the seminary I have the awesome privilege of living in the true presence of Jesus.

This reality had me thinking about what friendship with Christ really looks like. Generally, someone spends a lot of time in the presence of friends, and in seminary we spend (by choice, and by the fact of living there) a lot of time in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament. So often, friendship itself, let alone friendship with Christ, is not understood well. It seems to fall apart into either a mutual admiration society or an equal-exchange club.

Friendship with Christ is neither about an equal-exchange club, where I do some nice deeds for Jesus and he gets me into heaven (real friends aren’t keeping score), nor is it a mutual admiration society, where we spend countless hours giving undeserved or useless praise to one another. Friendship with the person of Jesus is a call to a love that exchanges everything about oneself with the friend. Friends make sacrifices for each other and are willing to drop everything for one another. Nothing about us can be hidden from good, long-time friends, and so it should be in our friendship with Christ.

Friends don’t look at each other, they look at a common goal. C.S. Lewis once said of friendship, “Lovers are normally face to face, absorbed in each other; Friends, side by side, absorbed in some common interest.” Part of our relationship with God should be spent looking face to face as lover and beloved, but we shouldn’t neglect the aspect of our relationship that calls us to authentic friendship. The reality is that for most Catholics, spending copious amounts of time in front of the Blessed Sacrament is not possible, and even might betray their vocational duties to their family. Therefore, friendship is something that must be intentionally cultivated, because friendship requires the knowledge that Jesus is by your side, with you, in all things, even when you are not beholding his presence. This means that our friendship with Christ can be built when we simply recognize his presence in all moments of our day, and spend those moments in the knowledge that he is with us as we work, play, relax, etc. Invite him to come into your struggles, joys, hopes, fears, etc. A good friend doesn’t really need anything from you, he just wants you.

In this friendship, this life lived with Christ, it is really easy to become caught up in our “status.” This can become a huge impediment to progress in our friendship with Christ, and it is a problem that I have noticed those discerning priesthood can be especially susceptible to. It can really put the brakes on journeying toward holiness. In seminary we sometimes term this the “super-discerner.” Imagine a friend who, every time you spend time with them, is constantly asking or worrying about where your friendship stands. We have to make sure that our relationship with the person of Jesus Christ is lived, not constantly reflected upon. Don’t get me wrong, we should take moments of prayer to reflect on where we are and how the Lord has been with us and moved us, but if that is the only thing we do when we pray, our friendship will not grow.

One of the most important aspects of this friendship to keep in mind is that a friendship must be lived in the present moment and in the first-person perspective. Often, we try to make excuses for our actions and others’ by acting as though we are the omniscient third-person narrator of life. We have to remember that God is the omniscient third-person, and we are the first-person character in our lives. That means, to really grow in friendship, we must live it and trust in the Lord. This frees us from worrying and anxiety so that we can live this awesome life with and for the Lord, especially with him as our closest friend. May God give us the wisdom and strength to invite him into our lives and cultivate a friendship that will challenge us to grow in holiness!

This post originally appeared in Today’s Catholic.