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Zechariah

“And behold, you will be silent and unable to speak, until the day on which these things shall be, because you have not believed my words, which will be fulfilled in their time.” (Lk 1:20)

Before God called St. John the Baptist to preach, He called Zechariah and Elizabeth to be the parents of this holy man, entrusting them to teach and prepare their child for a great mission. In the Gospel of Luke we are introduced to Zechariah as the one who has been chosen to be the High Priest that goes into the Holy of Holies in the Temple to offer incense at the mercy seat and to bless the people in the name of the Lord, a name that is so holy that only the High Priest utters it and only during this blessing. Zechariah is a good man who obeys all the Jewish laws and, as a priest, serves God, but he has been too busy doing the temple activities instead of preparing his heart. 

It is in the place of the Holy of Holies that the angel Gabriel appears to him and announces that God has heard his prayers. At the mercy seat Zechariah finds out that he will have a son who will have a role in helping Israel obtain the mercy they seek. Gabriel tells Zechariah God’s plan, but Zechariah does not believe it because he does not trust God completely.

This passage comes right before Gabriel visits the Blessed Virgin Mary and She welcomes God’s plan for her life even though it means changing Her plans. While these two responses are contrasted, Scripture invites us to go deeper. Zechariah is a good man who is not ready for his mission, but does God abandon him and choose someone else? No.

“The plan of The Lord stands forever; the design of His heart through all generations.” (Ps 33:11)

God never changes His mind.  He instead chooses to work with Zechariah and prepare him for his mission.  He calls Zechariah into the silence where He can speak to his heart. He has months with Zechariah to teach him all he needs to know. He even sends His beloved daughter Mary, and His incarnate Son to Zechariah’s home to draw Zechariah deeper into relationship with Him. When John is born, Zechariah is prepared. He is filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesies:

“And you, my child, will be called a prophet of the Most High; for you will go on before the Lord to prepare the way for him, to give his people the knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins, because of the tender mercy of our God, by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven to shine on those living in darkness and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the path of peace.” (Lk 1:76-79)

Zechariah teaches his son to seek the silence and trust in The Lord and, as a result, St. John the Baptist becomes the greatest of all the prophets. All of this occurred because God never abandoned Zechariah. This reality is a great hope to all of us because each of us is far more like Zechariah than we are like the Blessed Virgin Mary.  We have all been distracted by the demands and busyness of life. We always intend to be prepared for the Christ Child at Christmas, but often the time of preparation is compressed into a small corner of our spiritual lives while we shop for presents, send Christmas cards, decorate our homes and churches, and prepare the Christmas meal. While these things are good, they are not the highest good if they have not brought us into a deeper relationship with God. Most years we find ourselves so exhausted by the demands we put on ourselves to make everything perfect for our families, that the meaning of the Christmas Mass – God becoming man for us – doesn’t not rest as deep within our hearts as we had hoped.  But God does not abandon us; He never changes his mind.

Each of us is called to a special mission that no one else can fulfill.  No matter how far astray we have wandered, God is there calling us back to Him.  On Christmas Eve Pope Francis opened the Jubilee doors at the Vatican and declared 2025 the Year of Hope. If you are reading this, this message is meant for you. God waits in Confession to forgive you; He wishes to fill you with His hope and peace. God longs to nourish you at daily Mass with His Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity to strengthen you in faith.  He waits in Eucharistic Adoration Chapels in many places throughout the world to speak to you in the silence; He desires to tell you of His love and draw you deeper into His Sacred Heart.  Zechariah’s story did not end at the Visitation; it began there. Your story begins today.

Thank you to my friend William Fuller who went into the desert silence to capture this photo of the comet.

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Read more about the article Our Father Who Art in Heaven

Our Father Who Art in Heaven

Over the years several Protestant friends have inquired about why Catholics have the body of Christ on the cross in our churches.  Our Protestant brothers and sisters display an empty cross in their churches because Christ resurrected from the dead.  For Catholics though, the cross means nothing without the sacrifice Jesus made for us.  The crucifix (Christ’s body on the cross) is central to our faith because His death saved us from our sins.  The shape of the church itself is a crucifix with the altar and tabernacle containing Christ at the head, and we the faithful sitting in the body. This is the simple answer, but it goes much deeper than this.

Jesus did not only die for our sins so that we could go to Heaven, He left us the gift of the Eucharist so that we could become one with Him and thus become adopted children of God.  We the created become members of His uncreated family. At any Catholic church we are home. All Latin rite churches throughout the world have the same readings and the same prayers each day.  No matter where we are, we can walk into a Catholic church and pray the Mass without knowing the language.  This is the unity of one family.  It reflects the unity of the Trinity as one family. After the Our Father, we exchange the Sign of Peace with our brethren signifying that we forgive one another, which is another sign of unity, before turning to the altar and asking Jesus to forgive us for our own sins in the Lamb of God prayer. In presenting ourselves for Holy Communion we communicate our oneness in belief. When we partake of the Eucharist — the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus — we all become one with one another just as all the branches are part of the same vine.  In the Eucharist, we receive the crucified and risen Christ and become one with Him, receiving a share in His inheritance as sons and daughters of God.

Jesus alludes to this plan when He teaches the disciples to pray “Our Father Who art in Heaven” and when He reveals how this becomes possible in John chapter 6, known as the Bread of Life discourse:

Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day, for my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in Me and I in them. Just as the living Father sent Me and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats Me will live because of Me. This is the bread that came down from Heaven, not like that which the ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.” (Jn 6:53-58)

His teaching become clear at the Last Supper when He says, “This is My body…This is My blood.”  At the Consecration during the Mass, the priest prays His words from Scripture: “This is My Body which will be given up for you” and “This is the chalice of My Blood, the blood of the new and everlasting covenant.”  When Jesus took human form to fulfill the covenant between God and Man which will stand forever, He did not separate Himself from His divinity. Instead, He humbled Himself to share in our humanity, and He elevated us to share in His divinity.

In the Catholic Mass, which is offered every hour of every day somewhere in the world, Christ’s sacrifice is re-presented in a non-bloody manner.  The priest, who through the sacrament of Holy Orders is in persona Christi1, presents Christ’s sacrifice to the Father on behalf of the whole world.  It is this continual offering of Himself to the Father that brings us the Mercy that sustains our sinful world. After transubstantiation2 the priest stretches out his arms in prayer, in the same position Christ stretched out His arms on the cross, and offers the prayer Jesus taught us calling God “Our Father.”  He stands in persona Christi, arms outstretched, acting as mediator for all of us.  

If the resurrection had not occurred, our faith would be meaningless. As Catholics it is vital for us to attend the sacrifice of the Mass every Sunday because every Sunday is a celebration of His Resurrection. We come together to strengthen our faith and partake in our Eucharistic Lord now for the nourishment of our souls and also that we may be resurrected on the last day, when we will receive glorified bodies just as Christ’s body is glorified.

[1] Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph #1548.

[2] CCC, #1376.

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Read more about the article This Is My Body

This Is My Body

Today is Easter Sunday, one of my favorite days of the year.  For Catholics, we celebrate the Resurrection every Sunday, but Easter is especially joyful.  After preparing during Lent with sacrifices, fasting, almsgiving, repentance, forgiveness, and prayer, we experience a deeper connection with each other, with Our Lord, and with the Mass.  As our pastor explained in his homily how we are all connected to “The Greatest Story Ever Told,” I felt such gratitude for the gift of faith.  Then I thought about what I have not done to share this gift with others.

A few weeks ago I returned a phone call to a friend.  When I mentioned that my phone is silenced when I am in church, she responded, “You went to church on a Thursday? To pray?”  When I responded that I went to Mass, she said, “Your church has services every day?”  I started thinking deeply about what we had said and I realized that my shortcomings were staring me right in the face.  Each conversation we have at some point turns to Scripture and she always shares her love for Jesus.  I leave the conversation feeling elevated, my burden of the day lifted.  I have known my friend Myrna all my life and she has the gift of joy which she readily shares with me and everyone she meets.  How is it that I have been such a poor friend that I have never shared my witness, my testimony, with her? Why have I never told her why I go to Mass?

As Catholics, we use the shorthand – “going to Mass.”  We say it so casually, we ourselves often forget that we are “going to participate in The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.”  Yes, we are active participants and yes, it is a sacrifice.  In every Mass, Jesus is on the altar offering Himself to the Father for us.  We begin the Mass with Scripture (the Liturgy of The Word), which always includes at least one passage from the Old or New Testament, a Psalm, and a Gospel reading.  We then follow with the Liturgy of the Eucharist, in which the gifts of bread and wine are presented to the Father.  The angels who sang the Hosanna announcing to the shepherds the birth of Christ, are again present with us when we sing Hosanna right before Jesus comes again to be physically present.  The priest acting in the person of Christ says “This is My Body” and “This is My Blood.”  At this moment, the miracle of transubstantiation (change of substance) takes place.  While the appearance remains bread and wine, the Eucharist is the Body and Blood of Jesus.  Jesus Himself is re-presenting His sacrifice on the Cross to the Father.  Every day.  Immediately after, the priest offers Jesus’s sacrifice in prayer for the whole world.  When we are at Mass, we participate by joining our prayers to Jesus’s prayers in interceding for the whole world. It is this daily offering of Jesus to the Father that brings mercy to our world and has kept back the Hand of Justice.  Every Mass is an encounter with Jesus Himself face to face.

Every day Jesus is offering Himself to the Father for our salvation and offering Himself to us in the Eucharist.  In this way He gives us a share of His Body, His Blood, His Soul, His Divinity.  This is the key to eternal life.  In Heaven, we are continually aware of His Presence with us.  He invites us to live Heaven on Earth.  He invites us into His Presence every day.  He awaits us with love and graces to help us advance in holiness.  Every communion received worthily, with love, increases our love for Him.  It is in these moments when I invite Him into my heart that I have prepared for Him as best as I am able, that I feel the intimate presence of Him, Who loves me so tenderly.  In these moments, I touch eternity and I am one with Him on Earth as I will be in Heaven.  This is why I am Catholic.

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