By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK
As I turned 60 this year I welcomed priests, natal and parish family, friends, and neighbors to an evening low Mass followed by dinner at our parish hall. These were my remarks for the homily at Mass:
We all celebrate birthdays and all of them are important. Each of our lives is significant in the Lord’s sight. I am humbled by your presence here this evening to celebrate my natal anniversary with Holy Mass, by which we praise and thank our Lord for this and every blessing, and for our meal together afterward to enjoy each other’s company. Thank you for your love and prayers, your spiritual friendship, on this occasion and always.
All of us mark the passage of time with a variety of responses and emotions. Hopefully they are all followed by a resignation mixed with some serenity. The day of birth takes on annual significance for these kind of reflections. We look back but we must also look forward.
Because life is always a gift, conferred by the Creator Himself, our anniversary of birth should always be a reason for celebration and gratitude. This especially in light of expanded legal protection for the preborn after the Dobbs decision. All of us can give thanks to God for the many who organized, prayed, marched, and otherwise fought for the cause of protecting human life in the womb for nearly 50 years so that each child can celebrate his or her birthday. God indicates the sacredness of each human person by infusing the soul at the moment of conception.
With each new milestone, whether one’s very first birthday, or 60, 70, 80, or more years, or whether life tragically ends too soon for those who are young, in light of its ending we wonder what will happen to us. The moment we are born our death is assured. How we live daily with this certainty marks every breath. This is where faith comes in. God’s promise must be our hope.
Life is a gift for which we always turn to our Creator with gratitude every day, as well as on our natal anniversaries. Tonight I’d like to reflect with you on the gift that our births to this world make possible: life in Christ, the supernatural gift conferred for the first time in Baptism. The purpose and goal of that gift is life that never ends. How that supernatural life of grace is preserved and grows now must be our highest priority in every day of life.
First, we are all in the world: It is where we are born, where the Lord places us. But it is also the locus of our encounter with Him, beginning with His Birth, Passion, Death, and Resurrection 2,000 years ago. And for that reason we are today in the Church able to encounter Him as the Word of truth in the words of Scripture and teaching, in the sacraments and, in particular, truly present in the Holy Eucharist.
We are in the world, but if we are to live now and forever in Him, with true happiness which knows no end, we must never be of the world. We each have been blessed with an immortal soul whose destiny is determined after our short sojourn on this Earth is through. We must make a daily choice for the soul, and for the interior life which measures our love, or not, for God. Our words and actions which weave the fabric of our lives must be chosen to reflect our faith and its goal. Our orientation, our fundamental choice to love the Lord which takes the form of friendship, should guide our choices for our other relationships, our entertainments, our leisure time. These all flow from the thoughts and sentiments of what we call the heart, our intellect and will.
Do we become absorbed in worldly conversations, the misuse or taking of the Lord’s name in vain? The caliber of the interior life is the measure of the soul. It is from the soul that thoughts, inspirations, and words express our disposition for or against the Lord. Let us use the Lord’s name always in prayer and praise alone. As Christ teaches, it is not what goes in that makes us unclean but what comes from our intellect and will that indicates our true identity.
“Hear and understand: not what goes into the mouth defiles a man, but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles a man….Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth passes into the stomach, and so passes on? But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a man. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a man; but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile a man” (Matt. 15:11ff).
Do we keep the Lord’s Day holy, to include the rest He commands as well as holy Mass? Our witness, our example for those who struggle to overcome sins and undertake conversion is His love for them expressed through us.
This evening our Mass is offered for the sanctification of priests. Our priests lead us by teaching and preaching the Word of truth. They give us the sacraments, above all Our Lord Himself truly present in Holy Communion. But they also give us examples of holiness and lives of prayer.
Cardinal Sarah had this to say recently about priests and the Gregorian reform at the beginning of the second millennium:
“This was aimed at freeing the Church from the grip of the secular authorities. By interfering in ecclesiastical governance and appointments, political power had ended up producing a real decadence of the clergy. There had been a proliferation of cases of concubinary priests engaged in commercial activity or political business. The Gregorian reform was characterized by the resolve to rediscover the Church of the era of the Acts of the Apostles. The principles of this movement were not based in the first place on institutional reforms, but on the renewal of the holiness of priests. Is there not the need today for a reform such as that? In fact, secular power has regained a foothold in the Church. This time it is a matter not of political power, but cultural. There reappears a new struggle between priesthood and empire. But the empire is now the relativist, hedonistic, and consumerist culture that has infiltrated everywhere. It is time to reject this, because it is irreconcilable with the Gospel.”
Let us ask the Lord to send us holy priests who will always speak to us in honesty about that in our lives which is irreconcilable with the Gospel. Thus they will seek their own salvation as well as ours: “Time flies, eternity awaits.” My wish and prayer for all of us is that, each time we celebrate our earthly births, our lives, as of yet whether long or brief, will be an occasion to mark our progress in holiness. As our days in this world grow shorter, may we always meditate on the endless eternal life.
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