Homily

Okay, so if you are willing, I'd like to ask you: When you drove, or walked, into the parking lot this morning and saw all the green balloons, how many of you thought, "Oh, they're for Pentecost?" For many, many centuries the great Feasts of the Church were a fairly important part of people's lives. Usually they went to church on those days, and they did not have to work on the feast days. There were often great folk customs that went along with these holy days, depending on what country you were from, as in Ukraine where green, leafy branches were a special way to remember the gift of the Holy Spirit Who came to us on Pentecost. Holy Days were marked with special preparations, special foods or baked goods, sometimes by communal processions, singing, dancing and music, and it was often a time to visit with relatives and friends. It was the Body of Christ praying and feasting and taking the time to celebrate some event in the life of our Lord, or His mother, or one of the saints. People enjoyed them, looked forward to them and found enrichment for themselves as they observed the feasts.

But that element of Catholic life in this country is most certainly gone for the overwhelming number of American Catholics. They only exception, of course, is Christmas so let's put that holy day on the side. I'm speaking about all the other holy days and let's define it more clearly—all the other holy days that fall on a weekday or a Saturday. So I invite you to think about this comparison: Let's say that the State of Oregon created a law which forbids any college or university football games on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. College football could only be played on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday. What do you suppose the Duck fans would do, how would they react and what actions might they take? Now let's say that the State of Oregon, passed a law that religious feast day could only be celebrated on Sundays. You could have any type of religious service you wanted, all day, every day of the week but if it was a feast day, you could only celebrate that on a Sunday. What do you think would be the reaction of most Catholics in Oregon to this rule and what actions, if any might they take?

America is often billed as the land people came to in order to escape religious persecution. But most of our ancestors did not come here for that reason. Even the Irish were allowed to practice their faith. Most of our ancestors did not come to escape religious persecution because they did not have any such persecution in Europe. They came here to escape poverty and hardship, for the most part. And when they arrived, they found a very different culture and a society where people in power did not share their religion. In fact those people often despised the Faith.

But our ancestors worked hard at their jobs, and often hard at their faith. They built their churches, and often grand churches, from the meager wages they made because they could not conceive of life without the Church. There were no religious holidays in Protestant America, and so, so many times our male ancestors woke at the crack of dawn to go to the Liturgy, to celebrate the Mass on those holy days, before they went off to work.

And they spent even more of their small wages to build Catholic schools, so that, in the face of a Protestant America which often despised them and their religion, their children could get an education not only in math and reading, but in the Gospel of Christ and the lives of the saints, with daily prayer and the catechism to back it up. And there would be Liturgy or Mass on those school days when a feast came up, and often the mothers, grandmothers, and other women would be at that service later in the morning. So people were still pretty much going to church on feast days, but, because the family was split up between home, school and work there was little opportunity for any other type of celebration. And that pattern continued pretty much through the 20th century until the last part. Protestant attitudes toward us softened. Religion of any kind began to drain out of public schools as did the threat of Protestant indoctrination, and as the cost of Catholic schools began to rise, more Catholics began sending their children to public schools. No feast day services for the kids there and as more and more mothers entered the work force, no morning Liturgy for them either. Gradually work and school seemed to exempt everyone from any exercise of religious feast day practice, and, lo! We became just like our Protestant neighbors in this particular area of life, and our atheist neighbors as well! I don't think I even have to mention that without any attendance at Liturgy, there wasn't any other kind of celebration at home either. It would just serve as a painful reminder that none of us went to church. In 1912 you could hardly find more difference between people if you took a Ukrainian Catholic coal miner and stood him next to a Presbyterian banker. In 2012 the odds are that you would find it very difficult to see any significant difference between their great-grandchildren.

For me, it is not just about going to vespers or Liturgy on the bigger feasts. It is also that we don't even celebrate them in any way at all. They are invisible, non-existent. They were not forbidden to us by Protestant America, nor were they outlawed by some Communist dictator. As a people we just kind of gave them up, dropped them along the way. And did we replace them with other better celebrations? I don't think so. We have ended up with a bunch of holidays that celebrate human achievement, and Thanksgiving which, if you watch nearly any TV show, is marked by not mentioning God. Actually, I'm not sure that Christmas (which, you notice, has become Christ-less in our time) would still be so strong if Walmart and Visa/Mastercard were not still promoting it. Tell me, friends, if there was no money to buy presents what would people do for Christmas?

I believe what we celebrate shows what is important to us: What we cherish, who we love, what we honor. And I wonder, do we no longer celebrate the great events of our salvation because our faith has grown weaker or has our faith grown weaker because we no longer celebrate them? I know it's impossible to turn back the clock to an earlier time; that's not going to happen. To one degree or another we've made our peace with those who tell us that production, commerce and the acquisition of wealth is the primary good of life. To one degree or another, we accept that this is the way our society runs. But I ask you to consider and always be open to celebrating the great goodness of our Lord. Who has given us every most precious and lasting eternal gift that we need, and even if we find we can only celebrate in our minds and our hearts, let us still take time to rejoice and be glad in Him, because even today, in just a short time, He is glad to come and be with us. How can we not be satisfied?