St. Vincent de Paul Parish

At the Last Supper, Jesus tells His disciples that He is going to His Father’s house to prepare a place for them.  This place will be opened by the Ascension of the incarnate Jesus into heaven.  The result will be the elevation of human nature to an unprecedented dignity.  
God holds out a noble future for humanity.  It comes as a free gift.  The dignity that the Ascension confers on human nature furnishes us with a vision that shapes our world and lays the foundation for our responsibilities to each other.  This calls for a response on our part.
“The Great Commission” has three elements to the plan.  Jesus confirms that all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Him.  On the basis of this authority, He commissions His followers to make disciples of all nations.  He assures them that He will be present to them until the end of time.   Seated at the right hand of the Father, Jesus continues His mission of drawing humanity away from the spiral of death and corruption to a place of life and happiness within the heart of God.
Christ gives His disciples the responsibility of being the means by which He is to extend His project of leading humanity to the Father.  The commission is to the disciples to go out to the nations, baptizing all peoples in order that they may die to their old ways and come to share in the new life of Christ.  They are to teach the nations to observe the commands of Christ.  This mission derives its authority from the risen Christ because of the universal sovereignty He has over both heaven and the earth.  Jesus promises His disciples of His continuing presence among them.  I am with you always until the end of the age.
Jesus is Emmanuel – God with us – and this remains true before and after His Ascension.  His physical presence will cease, but the spiritual presence of the risen Christ will know no such limitations.  The ascended Christ is not restricted to one particular place in the world but is now accessible and close to all.
The risen Lord guides and intercedes for those who go out into the world to gather and heal the scattered and bruised until the time when God’s kingdom will be established.  And until the time when all creation will be united in the Father’s house, where God will be all in all.  
Fr. Hernan Cely
Pastor   

                                                                        
It is as a family, or more precisely as a body, that we gather at Mass, but when we say the Creed, we say, I believe.  There is no we believe because the Faith of the Church is a personal faith for us.   Faith is confessed personally by the I.  Whenever people say, we believe, the we is restricted to those presuming to speak on behalf of everyone else.
Through Baptism the Holy Spirit gives us the power of faith, the capacity to have faith; but this faith is actualized in an explicit act of faith.  Faith, under God’s grace, becomes a personal act, an active reality.  Faith as an act comes about through our free and graced co-operation with the Holy Spirit.  Because faith is personal, it must be confessed personally.
It would be odd if Catholics did not sometimes question certain issues in the Church.  Most people do, and although our difficulties with a particular topic may worry us, we should not confuse these wonderings with doubts.  St. John Henry Newman wrote Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt.  The difference is between someone who struggles within a family fold and one who no longer struggles.
In our faith, we give our consent to believe in the Church.  We don’t invent our own Christianity to suit ourselves.  There will be and have always been contentious issues in the family of the Church.  That’s nothing new.  While we may struggle, we still believe in the Church because there is no other faith to assent to.  Where would we go?
Problems arise when we apply worldly models to the Church.  The Pope is not a CEO who can change company policy.  The Church is not a board of managers whose majority decisions can change doctrines or morals.  We need to keep our perspective.  Things were worse in the 4^th century.  The Arian heresy – that Jesus was not true God - was leading in the polls.   Worldly models have nothing to do with the work of the Holy Spirit.
In every age the Church has forcefully stressed the reality of sin and the devil, the need for conversion to Christ, and to take the Church’s teachings as a given.  The Church is Christ’s, or it is a lie.
We need the person Christ, we need His holy Spirit, which the world cannot receive and cannot know.   We need to let Christ be our Lord: of our desires, our loves, our needs, truly Lord of our whole persons.  When we can truly claim His lordship, life-killing and joyless doubts will vanish, and all our difficulties will be graced with faith.
Fr. Hernan Cely
Pastor

In today’s Gospel, Jesus says in my Father’s house there are many dwelling places.  We understand that in heaven, there is a place for everyone, individually prepared by Christ.  From what is the heavenly Father’s house built?  The Temple was built from stone, splendidly decorated; but the house to which we are called is what St. Peter calls a spiritual house built from living stones.
This talk of heaven as a house and us as stones is an analogy.  An analogy is a comparison of two different things with some partial similarities.  Let’s try another analogy.  We have all seen cheerleaders or gymnasts perform in human pyramids.  What if these athletes took the pyramid to another level, and created a church or cathedral built literally from a lattice of Christian gymnasts standing on each other’s shoulders?
The human lattice church would certainly be an impressive structure.  And truly, the Church is an impressive body.  She has preached the Good News continuously for millennia and brought Christ’s love to billions.
The human lattice church would, however, be a wobbly, unstable structure.  And, the fragility of our faith and of our Church is apparent to us.  We can’t hold this institution together on our own – we aren’t meant to.  The Church was Christ’s Church before she was our Church.  It is Christ, the original living cornerstone giving firmness to His Church.  We stumble; He holds firm.  The living lattice holds firm with Him.
The lattice has holes where new living stones can be inserted.  The Church is always inviting new members.  Members are part of her dynamic fabric and structure.  In our Baptisms and Confirmations, we are consecrated and anointed as individuals but also incorporated into the spiritual temple dedicated to Christ.  We are interdependent.
The human lattice Church is not a great analogy.  The real Church is more impressive, more dependent on Christ, more a communion of Christians, more loving among ourselves and toward the world.  Or if, through human frailty, she isn’t, we must, through Christ’s help, constantly strive to become so.
Fr. Hernan Cely
Pastor

                                               
During Easter Season, our usual pattern of scripture readings changes.  Instead of an Old Testament reading, our first reading is taken from the Acts of the Apostles.  Acts is the story of the Church – our story.  
The Old Testament doesn’t disappear as something unimportant in the face of the Good News of the Resurrection.   The Old Testament is the foundation of our story.  The writings of the New Testament draw on the Old; we learn of Christ in the ancient texts.
Saint Jerome, the great biblical scholar, warns that ignorance of scripture is ignorance of Christ.  On the road to Emmaus, Jesus interpreted for the discouraged disciples all the scriptures, beginning with Moses and all the prophets, what referred to him.
The message is clear:   Read the whole Bible and come to know me.
Jesus Christ and the Apostles praise and quote the scriptures.  The New Testament hasn’t been written yet.  It is the Old Testament that speaks of the Savior, supports the apostolic preaching, and prepares them for an experience of encounter with the Risen Lord.  
In today’s first reading, Saint Peter explains who Jesus is by using the words of King David.  David foresaw and spoke of the resurrection of Christ.  The prophecies have come true and redemption is at hand.
On the road to Emmaus, two disciples meet an unrecognizable Christ.  He teaches them the meaning of their history.  He opens the scriptures to them.
At the same time, we remember that these disciples were not at the Last Supper.  Their knowledge of Jesus’ breaking and blessing the bread was learned, not experienced.  They do not recognize Jesus because they previously witnessed Him take, bless, and break bread.  They recognized Him because the Risen Jesus is made present in the Eucharist.  Their journey through the scriptures is complete.   They see the Lord.
We live this journey at every Mass.
The Christ comes to us in the words of ancient men.  Jesus’ words in the Gospel explain our story by theirs.  In the breaking of the bread, we see Him and come to know that all these stories, His, theirs, and ours are one.
Fr. Hernan Cely
Pastor

                                                                  
Scripture does not explain why Thomas was absent when the Risen Jesus first stood among His disciples.   But because Thomas was absent earlier, the focus shifts to him eight days later when Jesus appears again.  We call him doubting Thomas because he set seeing and touching the wounds of the Risen Jesus as a condition for his faith.   Yet, scripture does not say that Thomas ever touched the wounds.  It seems that he did not need to, because as with the others, when he saw, he believed.
When we call him doubting Thomas, we use the term doubt as if it defines him.  However, if anything defines him, it is his unambiguous declaration of faith.  We do not need to know the circumstances that kept him away from the others on that first evening of the week.  The delay allows us to recognize the hand of God at work in Thomas.  We see how God brought him to the point where he could articulate the fullest statement of faith of all the disciples: My Lord and my God.
When the Risen Jesus first stood among His followers, he said to them Peace be with you, showed them the wounds in His hands and His side, and then they recognized Him.   His wounds serve as markers of His identity.  At the Last Supper, when Jesus said to His friends, you know the way where I am going, Thomas said, We do not know where you are going.  How can we know the Way.
In the upper room, in the hearing of Thomas, Jesus called Himself the Way.  The Way became the first name given to the followers of Jesus.   What makes it a Way is the shared intentional movement and a shared belief that it leads to a destination.  
Thomas saw the Risen Lord and came to faith, but the way in which he came to faith speaks to all of us who have not seen and yet believe.  We do not see His wounds, nor do we touch them.  It is Jesus who both sees and touches our wounds.  With Thomas and with each of us, our Lord and our God brings to completion the work he has begun within us.  He takes us to Himself because we are God’s work.  He is with us, and He wants to bring us home.  He came and stood among us:  that we may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing we may have life in his name.  
Fr. Hernan Cely
Pastor

Through all the scripture readings of the Easter Vigil, we travel from a garden to a garden.  Beginning in the beginning, in the vast garden of creation, divinely blessed and loved.  And now to the garden of Christ’s empty tomb, where in the beauty of the Easter dawn, Mary Magdelene will mistake the risen Lord for the local gardener.  But the journey goes on.  There is another garden.  The one promised to the repentant thief by Jesus in the very agony of His crucifixion.  Today you will be with me in the garden of paradise.
Through all our readings, starting with Genesis, we look back on the flow of salvation.  The waters of chaos are made fertile, the parting of the Red Sea ends slavery and gives newness of life to the children of Abraham.  The psalmist gives the invitation to draw water from the well of salvation.  The prophets promise divine life to water the earth, to give seeds to the Sower, and bread for the eater.  St. Paul proclaims that through the waters of Baptism, we are not just celebrating the Resurrection of the Lord but have actually entered into it.  We are warned not to forsake the fountain of living water but as the deer yearns for the running streams, so our souls thirst for the living God.
In the light of Christ, we have looked back on salvation history.  We have proclaimed Jesus as the Alpha and the Omega.  It is from the position of the Omega that we see all things in a new light. 
We preach the incoming of a whole new creation within this old world: like new wine in old wineskins.  Jesus’ Resurrection is the focal point of divine creativity, of an eighth day of creation: death-defying, sin-forgiving, healing, restoring, elevating, and raising up to newness of life.
As Jesus said to Martha before He raised Lazarus: I am the resurrection and the life.  Those who believe in me, though they die, will live.
In the Gospel of the Vigil Mass, the holy women at the tomb are instructed by the angel to turn away from the place of death and all that is deadly.  And turning around, they find, coming to meet them, the risen Lord. 
Fr.  Hernan Cely
Pastor

                                                                     
 
In today’s passage from St. Matthew’s Gospel, the crowds come out to welcome Jesus, greeting Him as the Son of David.  They give Him the Messianic title and treat Him as royal.  As we know, it was probably some of the same members of this enthusiastic crowd, who a few days later, shouted for His torture and death.
Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem was filled with joy, even the children were swept up in it.  It looks like a parody of a Roman triumphal procession.   Jesus did not come on a warhorse though; He came on a donkey.  There were no majestic trappings, nor victory banners.  He was greeted with waving palm branches and dusty garments.  As Holy Week progresses, we see more and more contrast between the imperial rituals of Caesar, the Lord of the World, and Jesus, the Incarnate Word, who made the world.  He will be dressed in mock royal purple and crowned with thorns.  His hand will hold a reed as a fake scepter.  
At Caesar’s accession, his soldiers raised him on a war shield to be acclaimed.  Pilate mockingly presents Jesus to the cursing crowd to be acclaimed and hoists Him onto the cross to be enthroned.  Instead of admiring courtiers, a group of clerics, ruffians, and disappointed idealists shout insults from the foot of the cross.   
Holy Week is an exercise in drama, like a pantomime. The true prince, whom nobody can really see, is present all the time, and His true identity is revealed in the last scene.  
Earthly powers attempt to emphasize their might and dignity by inflicting ridicule and humiliation on those who oppose them.  The joke is on them.  In this divine plot, pretensions to supremacy are held up as vain and empty.  Christ, the Lord of Glory, in His humility, questions the foundations on which all earthly power rests.
At the end of St. Matthew’s crucifixion scene, the Centurion and those who were with him say, truly, this man was the son of God.  The representative of Caesar, standing before the throne of the cross, proclaims the true king whose identity is now clear for all to see.  The Centurion acknowledges that there is another king beside Caesar.   A king who holds out His arms and says, I am gentle and lowly of heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

Fr. Hernan Cely
Pastor

                                                                    
Today’s Gospel tells a story about what most of us see as the worst personal disaster: death.  Lazarus, Jesus’ friend, has died, and we’re told of the reaction of his two sisters when Jesus comes to console them.  On the one hand, Martha rushes out of the house to greet Jesus before He enters the house and appears to scold Him for not being with them earlier.  On the other hand, Mary remains in the house with the mourners and only meets Jesus when her sister calls her.  But Mary, too, tells Jesus that her brother would be alive, if He had come sooner. 
Lazarus is dead.  Dead and buried. The mourners confirmed it.  The disciples had been surprised when Jesus waited two whole days before setting out for Bethany.  The Lazarus story makes a significant point about Jesus.  Before raising Lazarus from the dead, Jesus says to Martha, whoever lives and believes in me – though he dies, he will live.  The rise of Lazarus prepares us for the coming of Easter.
During Lent, readings like these focus our thoughts on our own mortality.  They heighten our awareness of the promise Jesus gave to the world when He spoke such striking words to Martha: I am the resurrection and the life.  He confirmed His promise in the raising of Lazarus,
In his encyclical, Deus Caritas est, Pope Benedict XVI said that being a Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.
During the remainder of Lent, we are called to experience that encounter with Jesus in our daily lives, and to allow Him the opportunity to change us so that we can appreciate the new horizon He offers us.  He points in a direction beyond death to eternal life.  
In this life, we will experience sadness and loss.  We will know suffering, anxiety, and pain.  Today’s Gospel demonstrates that with Jesus, our disasters bring us closer to resurrection.
Life is tough, and Calvary is not a place for the faint-hearted.  During these last days of Lent, as we stand beside Mary our Mother, at the foot of the cross, we lean on the promise Jesus made in Bethany.  Because we believe, we will see the glory of God.  Disaster will be turned into victory.
Fr. Hernan Cely
Pastor