Homily for the Second Sunday of Advent, Year A, 2022

Produce The Fruits!

Rev. Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara, CSsR

Homily for the Second Sunday of Advent, Year A

St. Alphonsus Catholic Church, Brooklyn Center, MN

Sunday, December 4, 2022

Before the great ancient Greek philosopher, Socrates was born, no one foretold his birth. Prior to the birth of Buddha, no one pre-announced his birth and his message. No one predicted the day he would sit under a tree and receive enlightenment. The mother of Confucius, the birth of Confucius, the birthplace of Confucius were not recorded anywhere centuries before his birth and emergence. There were no predictions about the birth of Mohammed or any other significant figures in history. These figures only came and said, Here I am, believe me. They were men from men; they were men among men and not the Divine in human flesh. But with Jesus, it was different. His coming was not unexpected. For centuries, his birth, his birthplace and mission were foretold all throughout the Old Testament. Jesus’ birth was predicted from the beginning of the Book of Genesis. Aside from Genesis, the Books of Isaiah, Micah, Hosea foretold of his birth. As for his death, it was predicted by the authors of Psalms and Isaiah. What does all this mean? It means that those who say that Jesus is just one more religious figure among the many are dead wrong. If you say he is one inspiring human being among the many others, you are wrong. If you say he is the greatest of all the prophets, you are wrong. If you say that he is one of the many messengers sent by God, you are absolutely in error. If you say he is the symbol of God, you are completely and utterly mistaken. Jesus is himself God! In the Nicene creed, we affirm and declare that “He is God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God.” 

One great prophet of ancient Israel, the last Old Testament prophet to prophesy the Adventus of Jesus was John the Baptist. In fact, he was the one who identified Jesus and pointed to him when he appeared at a public scene. In today’s Gospel (Matthew 3:1-12), John is in the Jordan River preaching repentance in preparation for the coming of Jesus. He is also baptizing penitents. More to it, he is letting everyone know his own job description: “I am baptizing you with water, for repentance…” But right after that, he transitioned into speaking about the one he is sent to announce of his coming: “The one who is coming after me is mightier than I. I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” John warns his listeners, especially the Pharisees and Sadducees who brag about being the descendants of Abraham that claiming Abraham as their father is not enough. He warns that for them to avoid the coming wrath, they must produce good fruit as evidence of their repentance. John is encouraging them to prepare for the coming of Jesus the Messiah by repenting. And he ties it to fruit. He ties it to doing things in their life that are righteous and upright. 

In our first reading (11:1-10), Isaiah speaks about the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit— the spirit of wisdom, the spirit of understanding, of counsel, of strength (i.e. fortitude), knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord. These gifts have been given to us, hopefully to produce fruits. And that fruit according to St. Paul in Galatia chapter 5 are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. The problem with the Scribes, Pharisees and Sadducees is that they were looking to their spiritual lineage as kind of their tickets to heaven. They are indeed children of Abraham. But John’s warning is that being children of Abraham is not good enough. They must produce fruit, fruit of repentance. In our own lives today, we can say, “Well, I have been baptized.” It’s good to be baptized. Baptism is the gateway to heaven, but we must produce the fruits of baptism to finally make it to heaven. Producing the fruits is how we prepare for the coming of the Lord. At every Advent, we memorialize Jesus’ first coming, pay attention to how he is coming to us today and then look forward to his second coming at the end of the age.

As we prepare for the coming of the Lord, it is important to ask ourselves the following questions: am I producing the fruits? Which of these fruits am I producing and which of them am I not producing? Am I turning away from that which is hurting me and preventing me from turning to the Lord? Interiorly, am I preparing for his coming? Is Advent just a period of putting up Christmas decorations? Is it about making our homes look more beautiful and smell more beautiful? Don’t get me wrong, doing all of that is good. But we should not forget the real house of God, which is you, your body, the temple of the Holy Spirit. During this season of Advent, make it a project to turn your heart around. Consider those things that are hurting you right now. Think of those things that are detrimental to your spiritual growth, walk towards Jesus the Divine Physician and present them to him. Before you know it, Christmas will be here. If you want to celebrate Christmas with Christ, take this season of Advent seriously. 

God bless you!

Homily for the First Sunday of Advent, Year A, 2022

Advent: Season To Finally Let Jesus Into Your Life

Rev. Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara, CSsR

Homily for the First Sunday of Advent, Year A

St. Alphonsus Catholic Church, Brooklyn Center, MN

Sunday, November 27, 2022

God is invisible. We can’t see him, but if you want to know what God looks like, look at Jesus. If you want to get some ideas of what God looks like, look at Jesus. Jesus is the icon, the image of the invisible God. In him the invisible God becomes visible in order  to set us free. He comes to save us from the deception and lies of Satan. He comes to save us from the seemingly glamor of wealth, power, honor and pleasure. Jesus comes to save us from ourselves. He comes to save us from the corrosion of attachment. Each of us, in various degrees, is attached to some worldly goods. We have some desires, some loves, some longings that work against our Christian commitment. Jesus wants to save us from those too. But if we deeply feel there is nothing in us that we need to be saved from, Jesus becomes a historical figure we fondly remember. If we don’t need salvation, Jesus quickly becomes one wise person among the many. He becomes a spiritual or moral teacher among the many others like Buddha, Mohammad, Aristotle etc. On the other hand, if you feel like a prisoner waiting to be released and set free, if your disposition is the same as the thief who said to Jesus, “Remember me when you enter into your kingdom,” then the ancient Advent chant, “O come, O come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel…” will be on your lips. If you have checked yourself out and found out you need the Savior, you will passionately sing and pray, “Come Lord Jesus, do not delay!” 

But why do we need salvation? Why do we need the Savior? Because we regularly wander away from the Lord’s path. We are meant to walk in the spiritual order of God, sadly, a vast majority of us do not always travel along that way. And the saddest news here is that a great number of the lost do not know they are lost and do not feel and think that they are lost. When I started driving here in the USA, I didn’t use GPS because I couldn’t afford it. I relied only on printed MapQuest directions. One day, after taking a priest to Memphis Airport and was driving back to the parish, I missed turning to the right boulevard. Since I wasn’t using anything electronic that can recalculate my route automatically, I got lost. The good news was that I knew I was lost. So, the moment I saw a gas station, I drove into it to seek help. As soon as I mentioned my intended destination, the answer I got was, “You are truly lost.” In the end, I was able to get home because the man I met at the gas station knew where my church was located, he was going my way, and he also asked me to drive behind him. 

Sisters and brothers, like the man I met in a gas station in Memphis, Tennessee, Jesus knows we are lost. He knows where we are meant to be. Jesus is the Way to where we are meant to be, and he is the Savior that wants to take us there. But are we willing to travel with him? If you look at your life right now, you may be pleased at where you are. You may have attained some success in your profession. You may have a good family and your children may be doing well in life. But at the deepest level, are you happy? At the spiritual, religious and moral level, are you entirely okay? Don’t you feel lost at the core? Like me, don’t you sometimes feel like you don’t know where you are going? Outwardly, we try to put up a good show. We paint a good picture that communicates to others that all is well with us. But at the depth, we know all is not truly well. We know there is some emptiness, some incompleteness, some deficiency, some darkness, some shame. Rather than ignore them or numb them with more worldly activities, turn and cry out to the one who said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). 

Advent is always the season of preparation. We prepare to celebrate Christmas. But this preparation won’t be adequate and complete if we go through the season without paying particular attention to how we conduct ourselves. Advent is a season of waking up. In our today’s second reading, St. Paul says, “Brothers and sisters: You know the time; it is the hour now for you to awake from sleep.” Advent is the time to “throw off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.” It is the season to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and to make no provision for the desires of the flesh.” Therefore, let us begin this Advent by identifying those actions and attitudes that come between us and our Lord. I understand that our culture tells us in a million ways to affirm we are innocent: “I’m okay, you’re okay.” But the Word of God instructs us to be honest with ourselves, to admit and acknowledge just like the thief Jesus promised paradise to, that we have done some things sinful and criminal. Acknowledging our guilt should not be a psychologically debilitating exercise. It should not lead to self-pity or a feeling of utter depravation. It is rather a courageous willingness to offer our weakness to the divine physician. It is allowing the God of justice to set things right in us. Until we do this, we will never appreciate the one who said, “I have come that you may have life, life in its fullness” (John 10:10). To be able to celebrate Christmas with Christ, we have to take Advent seriously by coming to grips with our deep spiritual deficiencies.  

Solemnity of Christ The King of the Universe, 2022

Our King Is The Crucified One

Rev. Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara, CSsR

Solemnity of Christ The King of the Universe

St. Bridget Catholic Church, Minneapolis, MN

Sunday, November 20, 2022

Today we celebrate the Solemnity of Christ Jesus the King of the universe. Everything we say and write about him, everything we celebrate in relation to him is finally meant to affirm him as the King of our lives, as the King of the universe, the one to whom absolute obedience and allegiance is due. In the entire New Testament, no statement emphasizes the absolute preeminence of Jesus Christ stronger than what St. Paul said in today’s second reading: “Jesus is the image of the invisible God...” God is invisible. We can’t see him. But if you want to know what God looks like, look at Jesus! If you want to get some ideas of what God looks like, look at Jesus. Look at what the authors of the Gospels say about him. If you pray before an icon, the icon becomes for you a window to the actual figure. For you, the icon is not just a pretty picture; it is meant to be a window to the truth behind it. When you pray before the icon of the Mother of Perpetual Help, the icon becomes a window through which the Blessed Mother is present to you. St. Paul is saying here that Jesus is the icon of the invisible God. God himself is present to you when you look at Jesus.

But what does Jesus look like? Let’s go to Golgotha, a garbage dump outside Jerusalem. Golgotha was the place where people were crucified, where criminals were put to death. At Golgotha a young Galilean Jew who proclaimed himself to be the long awaited Messiah was dragged to. Prior to this deeply sad event, he had appeared on the hills of Galilee, preached with unprecedented and alarming boldness. He also performed great miracles of healing and demonstrated a mastery over the forces of nature. He spoke and acted, not like a typical Jewish prophet, but as God. As a result of all these, huge crowds of people came to him. Some were drawn to him out of love; others out of curiosity, while others, out of jealousy and hatred. But at a climatic moment of his ministry, his haters got him arrested and brought him to Golgotha. With his arrest, his followers abandoned him. All those who were once with him left him. He was alone. At Golgotha, in this garbage dump, they stripped him naked and pinned him to a terrible instrument of torture— the cross. He is surrounded by a brutal band of soldiers who specialized in putting people to death. To make matter worse, as they walked by, they pointed at him, laughed at him, made fun of him. The onlooking people shook their heads not out of pity but out of disdain. The irony here is that he is the one that St. Paul is talking about. He is the image of the invisible God. He is the Lord of of lords. He is the King of kings. He is the one in whom all things hold together. He is the beginning, the middle and the end of all reality. He is God from God and light from light. He is through God from through God.

With these in mind we all can now see that our notion of kingship is sadly mistaken. Our notion of power, majesty, and lordship has very little to do with the real thing. Consider the things they said to Jesus on the cross, and it will help you understand how we get things right and wrong: “The rulers sneered at Jesus and said, ‘He saved others, let him save himself if he is the chosen one, the Christ of God.’ Even the soldiers jeered at him…. if you are the King of the Jews, save yourself.” Add to that, one of the criminals reviled Jesus and said, “Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us.” Their mockery contains the key. It contains the clue. What do we think kingship means? Power! Authority! Domination! For us, kingship means the capacity to save yourself. If you have enough money, if you are Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk or Bill Gates etc. or a billionaire, you have saved yourself from most of the inconveniences of life. If you have enough political power, enough political clout, you can save yourself. If you have enough cultural influence, you can save yourself from embarrassment, from humiliation and from being forgotten. To be king is to be able to protect yourself. But the irony here is that the true King, Christ the King is not the one who saves himself, but the one who forgets himself in love. The true King is not the one who saves himself, but the one who dies as he saves others. The true King is not the one who aggrandize his ego, but the one who gives it away. He is not the one who fills himself up, but the one who empties himself out. 

Sisters and brothers, this is the icon of the invisible God. Do you want power in your life? Stop filling up your life with the goods of this world. Empower others. Do you want life? Save others. Do you want to be saved, redeemed? Help someone else find Jesus. Do you want to be protected? Reach out and protect someone else. If you want to know the Alpha and the Omega and everything in-between, perform a simple act of love. That’s how you become a loyal subject of Christ the King. I guess it is not what you expected. It is not what the world tells us over and over again. But the true King is the one who gives himself away. 

Homily for the 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C

Nothing On Earth Lasts

Rev. Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara, CSsR

Homily for the 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C

St. John the Baptist Church, Jordan, MN

Sunday, November 13, 2022

Jesus began his public ministry in Galilee. On the hills of Galilee, he preached with unprecedented and alarming boldness. He performed great miracles of healing and demonstrated a mastery over the forces of nature. As a consequence, lots of people came to him. From among those he encountered, he chose as apostles and disciples. At a climatic moment of his public ministry, he sets his face to the holy city, Jerusalem, towards his passion. In today’s Gospel (Luke 21:5-19), Luke tells us that Jesus has just arrived at Jerusalem with his followers. More to it, they are now right in the temple. For the Jews of Jesus’ time, the temple was the very center of life. The temple was the economic, cultural, political and religious center for the nation. And it was unquestionably the most beautiful building any Jew at that time could see, especially for country folks Jews from Galilee. Coming to Jerusalem was a big deal for the disciples of Jesus, however being in the temple, the most elegant building in the entire nation in the company of Jesus who proclaimed himself to be the Messiah was a bigger deal. As the disciples were looking, adoring and praising the most beautiful building they have ever seen, which is the temple, Jesus drops a bomb on them: “All that you see here— the days will come when there will not be left a stone upon another that will not be thrown down.” Could you imagine the impact of such words on the disciples? They must be scratching their heads and wondering what sort of comment is that. They must have thought: this man claims to be the long awaited Messiah. And he is doing what the Messiah was expected to do. At the culmination of his work, he is now in the holy city and in the temple. Why can’t he move in, take over, and rule from this holy place? Why did he look at this stunningly beautiful building, which is the symbol of everything that is good, beautiful and right, and then predict that it will be turned down? Put yourself in the shoes of the disciples. Imagine you are one of his followers. You have walked with him through Galilee, you have journeyed with him and you have seen the enthusiasm of the crowd. You have seen him do the things that the Messiah is expected to do. Now you are with him in the temple, the most beautiful building and the center of the nation. And right before you he predicts the destruction of the temple.

What is the Lord talking about? As he has said in other passages, Jesus is once again declaring the stubborn truth that nothing in this world lasts. Yes, everything in the world is good. The Book of Genesis tells us that after God created everything, he looked at them and saw they were good (Genesis 1:31). Everything in this world is good, but nothing in this world lasts. Everything in the world reflects God but nothing in the world is God. The temple here stands for all those beautiful, delightful, beguiling, wonderful things that attract our attention; those things that we look at with rapt attention. The temple stands for things and people we are attracted to and captivated by. It stands for that pop star, that cultural icon, that political figure. It stands for your idea of the good life, the fat bank account, the impressive stock portfolio, that job, that building, that position, that office that you aspire to occupy one day. The temple stands for that house you dream of purchasing and living in etc. All those things we long for are represented by the temple. Like Jesus’ disciples, you are looking at them in wonder. But the Lord’s message for us today is this: that which you gaze upon with rapt attention, which you chase with everything you have, which you are giving up so much to attain, procure and acquire, will not last. Days are coming when all those things will be destroyed. 

Is this pessimism? Some people might say it is pessimism, but it is not. It is the deepest truth. Is it not true that nothing on earth lasts? Is it not true that buildings, offices, jobs, bank account, stock-portfolio will one day mean nothing? The point is— do not rest your life on any worldly goods. Reorient your life in such a way that the ultimate good is God alone. When you do this, then you will relate properly to all those earthly things. But when they become your God, when you stand bedazzled by them, then your life is disordered. This is the reason why Jesus at the climax of his life, deliberately undermines this worldly attitude and calls us to begin to live properly. 

But I have a warning for you. When you reorder your life around the love of God, expect storms and troubles. How come? Jesus says, “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be powerful earthquakes, famines, and plagues from place to place; and awesome sights and mighty signs will come from the sky.” In relation to what we have said already, read these symbols interiorly. When you are convinced that nothing in this world finally lasts, and you place your hope in God, expect interior warfare. There are interests, desires and powers in you that are focused on the goods of the world. Think of your ambitions, aspirations and love for worldly goods. When you say in your soul, none of these things lasts, don’t expect them to go away quietly. Expect a fight! There will be an interior struggle. When a new way of life centered on God meets the old way of being centered on money, pleasure etc expect storms and earthquakes. Why? Because new life is coming and it is confronting the old. Jesus also says, “They seize you and persecute you, they will hand you over to the synagogues and to prisons, and they will have you before kings and governors because of my name.” Christians who center their lives around God will always be troublemakers. When we stand like the rest of the world, bewitched by the goods of this world, we cause no one any trouble. We simply fit right in. But when we say no to what others consider ultimate value, when we stand with our eyes fixed on God and not on the goods of the world, expect earthquakes and storms on the inside and opposition from the outside. 

Homily for the Thirty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C, 2022

What Happens To Us After We Die?

Rev. Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara, CSsR

Homily for the Thirty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C

St. Bridget of Ireland Catholic Church, Minneapolis, MN

Sunday, November 6, 2022

From ancient times to the present day, the great spiritual question, “what happens to us after we die?” has been of great interest to poets, philosophers, and religious figures. The Greek philosopher, Plato said that at death the spiritual soul escapes from the prison of the body and continues to live on a higher realm, the realm of forms. Surprisingly, some versions of Plato’s dualist view are still very influential today even among Christians. Ask Christians what happens after we die, and many will say that the soul escapes from the body and lives in the spiritual realm. As for Hinduism, it speaks of reincarnation or transmigration of souls into a new higher or lower body depending on how you lived your life on earth. Hinduism says after a person has died, the soul might reincarnate as a cat, a cat might reincarnate as a human being and a human soul might transmigrate into the body of another. This process of birth and rebirth is endless until the soul achieves “moksha,” or liberation. So, it is after a long process of purification that the soul finally shakes off its association with matter. This doctrine is old and enduring in the East, however, it has made its way in the West. As for the ancient Greek and Roman mythology, they claim that the dead go into a dreary and lifeless underworld where existence is rather grim and where the dead long for life above the ground. In the Old Testament, we see a theory that is similar to Greek and Roman mythology. Some OT texts say that the dead go to the land of Sheol. What’s Sheol? It is a kind of depressing, dark, shadowy underworld. Elsewhere in the OT we find an even grimmer view of what happens to the dead. Many texts indicate that the dead will simply disappear. They return to the dust of the earth. The Psalmist famously asked, “What profit is there in my death, if I go down to the grave? Will the dust praise you as I do today” (Ps. 30:9). The sense is that it is only the living that praise God. As for the dead, once they are gone, they go back to earth. Now, the shocking thing is that all these views of what happened to the dead are still held by people to this day. When you ask people what their afterlife view is, you will find some versions of all we have said so far. 

Although the Old Testament has two views of the afterlife that are not compatible with what we see in the New Testament, it does have one unique view that matches with the view littered everywhere in the NT— that at the end of the age, those who died will be restored to full embodied life in a transfigured way. This view is on display in today’s first reading taken from the second Book of Maccabees (7:1-14). At the time when the Jews were being persecuted, a whole family was being compelled to break the Jewish law that forbade eating pork. But the family heroically refused to do it even with the threat of death. As one of the sons faces death, he says to his executioners, “You accursed fiend, you are depriving us of this present life, but the King of the world will raise us up to live again forever.” As another son holds out his hands to his executioner to cut them off, he says, “It was from Heaven that I received these; for the sake of his laws I disdain them; from him I hope to receive them again.” As the last brother dies he says, “It is my choice to die at the hands of men with the hope God gives of being raised up by him…” In those words we find a distinctive doctrine of afterlife which insists that God will at the end of time bring back to life these heroic martyrs. Their language is not platonic dualism. It is not the language of the soul escaping from the body. It is not the language of gloomy Sheol. It is also not the language of resignation to nothingness. These young men are filled with uncommon confidence that God in his love will restore the dead to a full and elevated bodily life. 

Against this rich background we read the Gospel of today (Luke 20:27-38). We are told that the Sadducees— a priestly caste often associated with the temple worship in Jerusalem who did not believe in the resurrection of the dead came to Jesus with the question of the resurrection. Jesus has been preaching a different doctrine and the Sadducees have heard of it. So, they came to him and posed a puzzle meant to embarrass him, ridicule him and confuse his belief in the resurrection. They made up a story of seven brothers who, one after another, got married to the same woman during their earthly life. Then they asked Jesus, “At the resurrection, whose wife will that woman be?” Their question was meant to mock the belief in the resurrection. What does Jesus say? He says in the next life, in the resurrected life, people won’t marry or are given to marriage. How come? Because we won’t die. One of the prime purposes of marriage is the procreation of life. The need to procreate is based upon our own mortality. We have children because we know we are going to die. So when we die, our children will preserve the life of the human race. Since we won’t die, the concern to propagate human life won’t be needed. The point that Jesus is making is that the resurrected life is an embodied life but also an elevated, transfigured embodied life. It will no longer be saddled with mortality but now clothed with immortality. 

Of course this Gospel is a great anticipation of the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead. All the Gospels witnessed the truth of Jesus’ terrible death in the hands of his executioners. Much like the story in the Second Maccabees, Jesus is a martyr in the hands of the enemies of Israel. He died and is buried. After that, nobody in the Gospel talks about Jesus’ soul escaping from his body. Nobody talks about Jesus going down to Sheol or to some boring existence. Nobody says he dies and stays in the grave. What they said is that Jesus rose embodied. He rose physically from the dead. They touched him. He ate in their presence. But his resurrection is not a return to this ordinary life. In numerous ways, Jesus shows that his resurrection transcends the limitation of space and time. That his resurrection is embodied, real and objective. When St. Paul was asked what resurrection is like, he speaks of a spiritual body. The resurrection is an embodied life, but it is also a body that has been spiritualized, elevated, transfigured, transformed, and more beautiful through God’s love. This is what happens to us after we die. Let’s thank God for it everyday.