*Liturgy going on* "And it was marvelous in our eyes."
"Peace be with you the proclaimer of the Good News." "Glory to You , oh Lord, glory to You"
*Father starts Sermon* "In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Good morning." Congregation: "Good morning."
Father: "Christ is in our midst!" Congregation: "He is, He was, and ever shall be."
Father: "So, today we have a very special opportunity given to us.
As we read in the Apostles that Saint Paul was talking about being refreshed by his brothers who came and
visited him and that they had a great love for the Lord. And that all those who love
the Lord should continue to praise God and so, we were blessed this weekend to be refreshed
with Steven Christoforou from the Archdiocese. "Be the Bee" is one of the ministries of the
Youth and Young Adult ministries of the Holy Archdiocese. And we also have Christian Gonzalez
also will be coming up and speaking to us as well. And Christian is also with that beautiful
program and they did a wonderful retreat for our middle school and high schoolers as well
as for Sunday School teachers, youth advisers and some parents. So both of them said that
they would offer some words, I think, and I don't know however you would like to do it.
Steve: "Sure. I'll go first." Father: "You're going to first. Alright."
Steven: "Your blessing, Father." Father: "The Lord Bless you and Steven, God bless you."
Steven: "Thank you. In the Name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Morning everybody."
Congregation: "Good Morning." Steven: "Christ is in our midst." Congregation: "He is, He was, and ever shall be."
Steven: "So we read a little bit today from the Gospel according to Matthew.
A little bit earlier in that Gospel, we read a really interesting line.
Christ tells us that the Kingdom is taken by force, by violence. I don't think that He had in
mind what we read about today. Today as we just heard, we read about tenants who work
the land, and don't want to give up the fruits of their labor. So the Lord of the lands sends
servants over and they beat the servants and then the Lord of the land sends his son.
And they result to kill the son because they want to take the inheritance. They killed the heir
to try to replace the heir so they can take what is his. A very perverse time of violence
in an attempt to take this inheritance, to take this kingdom. I think it's helpful to compare to
a different sort of violence that we read about much, much earlier in the Scripture.
All the way back in Genesis. Because if we go back to Genesis, there"s a really interesting
short passage in the life of Jacob. And during his troubles with his brother, Jacob sends
his family away, sends his possessions away and is alone. And it's kind of out of nowhere
it seems, he starts fighting somebody. He starts wrestling with someone. And they wrestle
all night and they wrestle into the day. We don't really know who it is, it's not really identified.
But this person tells him at the end of this that "You have struggled against
God, you have struggled against humans you've overcome" and He changes his name. He struggles with God.
Does violence in a sense to God, does violence in a sense to other human beings.
What does that mean? I think we actually experienced a little bit of this yesterday during our retreat.
Because before we got to any of our sessions, before we got into any of our education
and our discussions, we did something that was really difficult, right at the top.
We took the time to be silent. So the kids and I got together and we spent about 15 minutes
not saying anything. Silent. It was hard. It was really really hard. There was a certain
violence that we needed to do to ourselves, a violence that we needed to do to our bodies,
to keep ourselves physically still. There was a violence that we needed to do to our hearts.
To keep our hearts from being flooded with all these different emotions and all
these different distractions as they frequently do. There was a violence that we did to our
minds, to keep our minds from moving backwards into the past and being preoccupied by memory
and moving forward to the future and being preoccupied by plans as apposed to being rooted
firmly in the present which is where we are. The conclusion that we came to is that though
we're here, right here right now, we're not in a sense. Because we're always moving around,
we're always being distracted and it takes a certain level of violence against ourselves
to force ourselves to be were we are, to force ourselves to be who we truly are.
And that doesn't even get to the violence that Jacob eventually had to do. A violence that
Elder Emilianos, the former Abbot of Simonopetra, a monastery on Mount Athos talks about.
He talks about the violence of prayer. That prayer is not simply words, prayer is not simply supplications.
But it's kind of a physical grasping after God. Because when we go back and we look at Genesis,
the man tells Jacob to leave him alone at one point, and Jacob
says "I will not leave you alone until you give me your blessing." And the Elder looked
at that and said "That's kind of what our interaction with God is." A love that motivates
us so much, that we go after God. Not with meekness, but with boldness. To grab Him the
way the woman grabbed after the hem of His garments to receive His blessing.
Boldly, without asking. To boldly go after God, to simply grab Him and say "I love You so much,
turn to me. Turn to me in my pain, turn to me in my sorrow and simply give me Your Blessing".
A violence that we do to ourselves to put ourselves in that position, and then a violence
in a sense, that we do to God. To simply ask Him to look at us, to acknowledge us.
Not to replace Him, not to replace Him like those tenants did. To touch Him. To connect with Him.
The tenants were foolish. The tenants thought that they can get that inheritance
by replacing the Heir. But if they'd waited a little bit, if they had flipped through
the rest of the Gospel, they would have realized that the Heir invites us to sit with Him.
The Heir invites us at His table, the Heir invites us to literally be a part of Him.
To connect with Him in the most intimate possible way, to be a member of His very body.
And we do that by doing violence to our bodies. By forcing ourselves to really be here.
By forcing ourselves to be still, by doing violence to our hearts. By controlling the flood that
overcomes us on the inside, by doing violence to our minds by forcing us not to be distracted,
but to be here, to be truly present where we are. So we can truly acknowledge God.
So we can truly acknowledge neighbor. So we can look people in the eye and connect.
So we can look God in the eye and connect. So we can grasp Him and say "I love You, give me Your Blessing".
That's what He wants. The Blessing waits for us. It's up to us not to
replace the Heir. It's up to us to do the work to connect ourselves to the Heir.
It's up to us to do the work, the violent work, the work of prayer, the work of fasting,
the work of alms giving, the difficult violent work of the Church. To reach out and connect
with the God that loves us so much that He sent us the Heir, not that we can replace Him,
but that we can literally be a part of Him. In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Christian Gonzalez: In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit Amen.
Kinda feels like we just did that. Brothers and sisters, Christ is in our midst.
Congregation,: "He is, He was and ever shall be." Christian: So I grew up
in a family of story tellers and I grew up in a family of readers and I have myself grown
to love books, grown to love stories over the years but probably no story stands out
more to me than the stories told in the "Chronicles of Narnia". Anybody? Hands? Oh yeah.
That's just the best books ever. But my love for these stories came because when I was a young boy,
my mom would stay up and read these books to me. And when we read the "The Horse and the his Boy"
which is just a great book, instead of the main characters name, Shasta, she would
put my name into the story. And so the story that she told was no longer about the horse
and his boy, but it was about the horse and me. The Horse and Christian. Christian had
been placed into this world of Narnia. And I thought "wow, this is crazy. This is my
story. I'm a part of.. how did.. I can't believe there's a book about me! This is great. " And
now, my wife and I started doing the same thing with our four-year-old daughter where
we started reading "The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe" to her, which I mean come on,
it doesn't get any better that, right? And we started putting her name in instead of
Lucy's name. So we talk about Peter, Susan, Edmond and Elena. And Elena is the one who
finds the faun, Elena is the one who is kind of leading this group through Narnia and it
actually fits pretty well with my daughter, she kind of really likes to try to take control
of situations, pretty well, actually. So she loves that this little girl is named Elena.
She loves that Elena is a part of the story. But there's one part of the story that she
really doesn't like. The witch. She always wants to know "what chapter are we going to
see the witch next? When does the witch show up?" Could we skip chapter nine? Is it alright
if we don't read chapter nine, that part scares me. Because the witch is scary." And every
time that comes up, I say "you know what honey, it's okay. Because I'm going to let you in
on a secret. I'm going to tell you what happens. The witch loses. The witch loses. We don't
have to be scared of the witch because the witch loses. She might do some really awful
things in the meantime, she might get a good punches in and we're not expecting them but
she's going to lose. She just doesn't win this story. It's going to be okay."
So then she kind of "*sighs* okay. I don't like the witch, the witch scares me, but the witch loses."
And so now, every now and then, when my wife gets a little bit nervous about something
she goes "it's okay mom, the witch is going to lose. The witch is going to lose."
Yesterday, we celebrated the Beheading of John the Baptist which is a pretty sad story,
pretty bad one. We also hear today about a bunch of tenants killing an Heir to take His inheritance.
There's a lot of scary stuff. We live in a world were things are pretty scary.
There's a lot of scary things happening around. All you have to do is turn on the news. That's really it.
And I feel like sometimes it can get really overwhelming to hear all the bad news,
to hear all the things that are happening, to hear of Heirs being killed, to hear of
Prophets being beheaded. But there is a deeper and more true story being told in our lives
and in the history of the world than in Narnia. It is the story that God is writing in our
hearts, it is the story that God continues to write in history. And I'm going to let
you in on a secret. In the end, He wins. He wins. So we don't have to be scared.
We just don't have to be afraid anymore. Because in the end, the witch loses.
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit Amen.