Our Domestic Church

Deacon Bruce's
Homily for Sunday December 27, 2009
[Holy Family Sunday Cycle C]
Sirach 3:2-6, Col 3:12-21, Luke 2:41-52

Today is Holy Family Sunday – the one Sunday of the year where we look at the family that Jesus grew up in. So who is this Holy Family that we are celebrating today? I guess that most everyone can answer that question. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, or JMJ as some might remember writing on the upper right hand corner of their school papers.
And what was this Holy Family doing in the Gospel? They were fulfilling their duty as faithful parents. Presentation of children was an essential practice to devout Jews. Mary and Joseph were just that, devout, holy, God fearing; brought up to respect their God and follow the time honored traditions of their faith.

The Holy Family shared in the love of Christ for the Church. They had been brought up in their faith which professed a profound love of God for the people of God and God expected them to return that love by loving others. That was especially true within the family. As it says in our second reading:

Put on, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving one another.

Is this what the Gospel is asking of us; to be devout, faithful followers of Christ? Of course, that is what the Gospel is about. The Church also calls us to this on this Sunday, to review ourselves in light of our response to our faith; to view our family in light of the Holy Family.

But wasn't it a lot easier to be faithful back then? Wasn't it a lot easier to be family back then?

Back then, their culture was deeply steeped around the family. Family grew up and stayed in the same small area. People didn't pull up their roots and transplant themselves hundreds of miles away. They weren't transferred across the continent to another job. They didn't have the constant barrage of materialistic ads and constantly morally degrading influence of most of the media we get today.
There were no iPods that silently infiltrated suggestive stanzas and no movies that tickled the eyes with blatant sexuality. Elders were held in esteem for the wisdom they had gained through the experience of a lifetime, within the family.
The family molded and shaped the children's lives, and family meant extended family, aunts, uncles, grandparents, grandchildren, cousins, nephews and nieces. All these people knew each other and knew where they came from. There was no hiding of anything from them.

The family back then in the time of Mary and Joseph kicked in when troubles came, closing the circle of love around the family in need. Children played games that were about life experiences not mystical characters in mystical lands. The history of the family was passed down from generation to generation, from grandparent to grandchild.

You knew where you fit into the family, not worried about what you looked like or how they would view you. And the family was always available to help.

So what have we today?

Families spread across many states that don't know each other, but inwardly want to. Families who don't even know when a member is in trouble, and children who no longer esteem the elders because they are "too old" and "they don't understand " the way life is now.

It is no longer enough to bring your children up to be famous athlete’s (as we see in Tiger Woods), nor is it enough to bring them up to be powerful Lawyers (as we have seen in Eliot Spitzer), nor is it enough to bring them up to be financial wizards (as we saw in Bernie Madoff), but it is important to bring them up as faithful, spiritually strong citizens of God’s kingdom We now more than ever need heroes like John Paul II, Mother Theresa.

So, isn’t it so hard to be a Holy Family that only Jesus, Mary and Joseph could be one? What do we do then, give up? That’s what parent’s seem to do, they give up by trying to run around keeping up with the culture by investing more time taking their kids TO things than in talking with them, by buying more things for them than in investing in their eternal life, by finding more and more "social events" and having no really meaningful relationships. We have had our holy family culture torn from us in less than a century.

We should be looking for support for our family and our faith (what the family used to do) by finding others around us who can share our faith, and building on those relationships. By joining with them and trying to become family again. By trying to bring together again our own families.

We should be spending time talking about our faith and traditions with our children (and children should be asking about those things from their parents). We should be about re-instituting old family traditions or making new ones, by celebrating special AND ordinary events with each other.

How many parents really know their children today. If left alone could you trust your children not to get into trouble? How many parents spend time finding out their children’s wants but more so their needs both physically and spiritually? How many parents share their faith with their children on a regular basis? How many parents actually pray with their children – on a regular basis?

Blessed Luigi Beltrame Quattrocchi and Blessed Maria Corsini were a married couple with 4 children who were beatified in 2001. The Beltrame children recall that their parents led a simple life, like that of many married couples, but always characterized by a sense of the supernatural. Cardinal Martins, Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, said that they "made a true domestic church of their family, which was open to life, to prayer, to the social apostolate, to solidarity with the poor and to friendship".

The catechism states that it is the task of the parents to prepare their children in the faith. How many of us actually take the time to do that. Do you know your faith enough to do that? The catechism states that family members actually carry out the Church’s mission by fostering mutual love in the home, and through that love, by building up the community of the Church and through that society itself. How many of us make that our first priority?

The Catechism says that the family is the domestic church:

“The Christian family forms an environment within which faith is professed and witnessed. When family members pray together, engage in lifelong learning, forgive one another, serve each other, welcome others, affirm and celebrate life, and bring justice and mercy to the community, they help each other live the faith and grow in faith. Some families may not understand themselves as themselves as a domestic church. Perhaps they consider their family too broken to be used for the Lord’s purposes. (But this is the important part to hear) They need to remember that A FAMILY IS HOLY NOT BECAUSE IT IS PERFECT, BUT BECAUSE GOD’S GRACE IS AT WORK IN IT.”

By being a holy family – by being a family steeped in its faith, relying on God’s Grace and by partaking in the sacraments as a family, we can become an example of THE Holy Family. We can become an example to the rest of our extended families, our communities and all of society. And by being an example, we can begin to ensure that our family will survive in its faith, and that the Church (our true home and family) will grow and become more like the Holy Family in every way.

It may sound trite or old-fashioned, but what we need most is to BECOME family again - Holy Family - so that we can allow Jesus to be born anew in us, just as he was in history. Maybe then our lives will flourish within the safety of family, maybe then vocations (vocations to the priesthood and diaconate, vocations to religious life – yes, but even vocations to saintly chaste marriage) will return and flourish, maybe then God will bless us as we present ourselves in His temple, as we attempt to become members of his Holy Family.


Your brother in Christ,
Deacon Bruce

Be Opened!

Deacon Bruce Maltzen's
Homily for September 6, 2009
[23 SUNDAY in ORDINARY TIME, CYCLE B]
Is 35:4-7a; Jas 2:1-5; Mark 7:31-37

With today’s Gospel reading we enter into a central part of Mark’s Gospel. The section begins with the healing of a deaf man and ends with the healing of a blind man. These are not just miracle stories about Jesus’ power but have a teaching purpose. Here in today’s gospel, a man is brought for Jesus to heal. He was deaf and he had an impediment in his speech.

The healing process that Jesus uses is almost like a ritual and, in fact, it was. Jesus puts his fingers in the man’s ear and puts spittle (saliva) on his tongue. In Mark 8:23 he puts spittle on a blind man’s eyes and he is healed.

You know, as a side note, saliva actually contains a chemical that aids in the healing of wounds. It is called histatin. And even though the mouth is full of bacteria, wounds in the mouth heal much more quickly than those in other locations, such as the skin and bones. Saliva has also been discovered to contain many proteins with antibodies that work against infection. A protein called lysozyme can actually break down bacteria and neutralize it. I guess moms must know this instinctively, because how many of us have been mortified as a child, when our moms spit-cleaned a smudge or a cut on us, because there was no water available? Notice how God seems to have made everything good?

So, Jesus puts his fingers in the man’s ear and puts spittle on his tongue. At the same time He looked heavenward – to his Father – and said, in Aramaic, "Ephphatha!, Be opened!".
Immediately the man was healed: he could hear and speak perfectly. The people around him were astounded. They cried out almost in chorus: "He has done all things well; he makes the deaf hear and the dumb speak." They were echoing the lovely words from Isaiah in our First Reading: "Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, the ears of the deaf unsealed, then the lame shall leap like a deer and the tongues of the dumb sing for joy." This is to indicate that the future promised by the prophet Isaiah has now arrived in Jesus.

The WAY that Jesus heals the man is a model to us of the Sacrament of Baptism. Through the gift of faith which precedes adult Baptism, our ears are opened to hear the Word of God and our tongues are loosened to speak about Christ to others. It is part of the baptism ceremony for the priest or deacon to touch the ears and the mouth of the person being baptized. This is during the prayer called the Ephphatha prayer which goes:
“The Lord made the deaf to hear and the dumb to speak. May He soon touch your ears to receive his word and your mouth to proclaim his faith, to the praise and glory of God the Father”

Baptism is a sign of our incorporation into the Body of Christ, his Church. It involves a total commitment on our part to the way of life that Jesus calls us to follow. A central part of that commitment is a growing openness to hear what Jesus says to us and a growing ability to be able to share our faith with others. Unlike the man in the Gospel story we don’t normally find ourselves immediately endowed with these gifts.

If we are honest, many of us are not very good at either listening or speaking, where God is concerned. Some have even stopped hearing. In catechism class they heard all about the 7 sacraments, the 10 commandments of God, the 7 deadly sins and they now feel there is nothing more to learn.

They may not realize it but they have become deaf! And, being deaf, they cannot speak either. They have nothing of worth to say, nothing to share. And it is not infrequent to meet Catholics who are highly qualified in their secular profession but are basically illiterate in their faith. What really is distressing is that, in their ignorance, they are often not slow to pontificate on what Catholicism is about.

Others, though, are good at listening. They want to know more about the meaning of Jesus and his Gospel in the changing circumstances of their lives. But they, too, though good at hearing may do very little speaking, very little sharing. Yet, to hear the Word of God and not to proclaim it is, in the mind of the Gospel writer, a contradiction. As Jesus pointed out in Matthew 5:14-16

You are the light of the world. A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and then put it under a bushel basket; it is set on a lampstand, where it gives light to all in the house. Just so, your light must shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father.

In the Gospel, to really hear the Word of God is to carry it out. "Hearing" implies: listening, understanding, making the message one’s own and living it out in word and action.
Although Jesus tried to stop the man in today’s Gospel from telling others, the cured man and all those around proclaimed what had happened everywhere they went. Really they just had to do it. After all, he was now hearing and he was now able to share with others what he had heard and experienced. If we were really excited about the Good News of Jesus Christ, if we were as excited as the deaf man after he was cured, if we were really excited about the experience of having the Catholic vision of life, we would have to do exactly the same.

If we were like the disciples after Pentecost, if our being Christian was truly a deep and impacting experience and not just a set of doctrines to be conformed to, we too could not keep ourselves from letting other people know.

The problem is that for a long time we have been told that our religion is something personal between ourselves and God: being morally good, keeping in the state of grace, going to Church at fixed times and receiving the Sacraments. But our faith is more than that.

Have we heard Jesus talking to us, giving us the message yet? Have we, for instance, heard today’s Second Reading? How do we treat different kinds of people in our society? If we are honest, we know that there have been times when we have treated people in exactly the way James describes: excessively eager to our well-off friends or people we think are important and off-hand and even rude to strangers, especially those who are obviously at the lower rung of society.

What are our attitudes to wealth and poverty?
Which people do we regard as really rich and enriching?
What kind of wealth are we in pursuit of?

Our answers to these questions will tell us how much we have really heard the Word of God. They will also tell us how we communicate to others by our words and our actions and attitudes.
Yes, we are often deaf and we are often dumb. We have lost the capacity both to hear and to speak. We have lost the ability to recognize the voice of God calling to us in the many changing situations of life, both good and bad.

Jesus took him away from the crowd. He touched his ears and his mouth and said, "Be open". And the man left singing the praises of God to the world.

There is a great deal of noise in our lives, but not just in the sense of sound. There is noise in the sense of disturbance--like static on the phone line. The radio, the TV, the phone, the kids, the neighbors, those driving down the street with their radios on overkill, are all audio noises, but there is also noise or disturbance, created by the continual worrying about tomorrow, the hanging on to the issues of the past. Noise.

Noise in our lives: "Did you see what she was wearing to Church? Guess who just broke up? Noise, all of it Noise. Mom, Dad, can I have.....? can I go......? would you buy me......?” Arguments over who played what role in a movie, or who did what on a sports team, or what to have for dinner or where to go. The phone rings, "You have a tremendous opportunity to save money now by having your driveway resurfaced this week." Or “We have a special offer, we can let you have one year of three magazines for price of just one.” While the TV rumbles in the background offering a cream to make you look 10 years younger, a device that will save you time when you plant your garden, a work from home opportunity that will have you making thousands of dollars a week within 1 month. NOISE, ALL NOISE.

And Jesus took the man away from the crowd, away from the noise. He took him to have a personal encounter with the Messiah. He calls us away from the crowd, away from the noise to his quiet.

Quiet before the Lord is so important.
--Just a few moments before Mass,
--out of respect for the presence of the Lord in the Blessed Sacrament,
--out of respect for the needs of others to get away from the noise,
--out of respect for our own need to listen to the Lord in the quiet.

Quiet in our homes.
--Fifteen minutes of quiet, before the morning gets going,
--or after the kids are in bed,
--or together as a family,
--just a little time to get away from the noise.
-- A little time with the Lord so he can touch us
-- A little time to read the scriptures
-- A little time to listen to his voice
-- A little time to enjoy his presence
-- A little time to enjoy his creation in a sunrise or a lightning storm or in a clear night’s sky

He touched the man's ears and he said, "Be opened."
He calls us to hear.
Hear the still small voice Elijah heard,.
Hear the whisper of Christ on the cross, telling us that even in the darkest moments of our lives that He will be there to help us get through it.
Hear the voice of Mary, reassuring the concerned wine steward at the wedding feast of Cana, and reassuring us, saying, "Do whatever he tells you."
Hear the voice of our conscience within, calling us to the new life of the Lord's love, calling us to holiness.
Hear the Word of God alive in the scriptures proclaimed in the Church
He touched the man's mouth and said, "Be opened".
He tells us not to be afraid to stand up for our beliefs and our lifestyle, even if we are told that we are not in concert with modern society.
He says that he needs our voices. He needs us to proclaim that he is indeed alive and with us.
He opens our mouths to proclaim his praise to the world.

He drew the man away from the crowd. He touched his ears and his mouth and he said, "Be opened." And the man left proclaiming the love of God.
He touched him.
He wants to touch us.


Your brother in Christ,
Deacon Bruce

I invite you to join us for our 3rd Annual Jeff Cavins Bible Study at the Church of Epiphany in Coon Rapids, MN. We begin on September 14, 2009. There will be two 10 week sessions. The first study will be "Adventure in Revelation" a study of the Book of Revelation, September 14 through November 16 2009, Monday evenings from 7:00 to 9:00PM in the Church. This study has been granted the Imprimatur by Justin Cardinal Rigali, Archbishop of Philadelphia. The second study will be "Catholicism 101" and will be held January 11 through March 15 2010, again on Monday evenings from 7:00 to 9:00PM. Click here to go to Epiphany's web site and to get more information and register. Registration is open from now through August 15.


Your brother in Christ,
Deacon Bruce