First Sunday of Lent

Link to today's readings
Deuteronomy 26:4-10 + Psalm 91:1-2, 10-11, 12-13, 14-5 + Romans 10:8-13 + Luke 4:1-13

Click here to listen to today's homily
Delivered at Holy Spirit Catholic Church in Mustang, OK

The secular society in which we live focuses on the physical and material. Our society scoffs at the notion – at least many do – that there is more than we can physically see or touch. But we who are Christians believe there is something more. In fact, we believe that we are spiritual beings, enfleshed spirits, that we are not physical beings in search of a spiritual experience, but rather that we are spiritual beings having a physical experience.

So we believe that there is an ongoing spiritual struggle in our lives where we are constantly forced to choose between the way of the evil spirit and the way of the good spirit, the Holy Spirit. The Church reminds you and me of this basic truth of our existence every year – every year! – on the First Sunday of Lent as we go with Jesus into the desert, as the fully human Son of God enters into a very real struggle with Satan in the desert. Having emptied Himself of all Divine Privilege by becoming the son of Mary, Jesus enters into the most basic battle of human life, a battle with the Evil One. The temptations in the desert and the temptations that will come later in His life, for the Tempter does not leave Him, even tempts Him on the Cross to come down – All of these temptations are based around His identity as Beloved Son of God. The Evil One is trying to rob Him of that identity, trying to strip that identity from Him. “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to turn into bread.” In other words, use the power of God given to you to feed yourself, take care of yourself. The Evil One saying after all, it is all about you.

But Jesus will not use the power of God to take care of Himself. He will use the power of God flowing through Him to feed others who are hungering for God. “I will give you all the nations of the world, all the worldly power, if you will simply bow down and worship me.” In other words, “Enjoy the riches of this world, you deserve it. Make it all about you.”

But Jesus redirects the Devil’s temptation to say, “It’s not all about me, about me seeking worldly power like another king, about others waiting on me, serving me, but rather it’s about God the Father. It’s about worshiping Him, about placing all of my gifts at the feet of Him who has made me. To bring about a different kind of kingdom.” For the kingdom that Jesus initiates is not a kingdom like worldly kingdoms that operate on division and accusation, but it is a kingdom where God desires all people to live together in peace. Where Jesus becomes the bridge between all that separates us from one another in order that we might offer and receive forgiveness, and understand the power of compassion to transform lives.

“Leap off the templetop. Force your Father’s hand. Make Him prove that He loves you.” Jesus will not do so. He doesn’t have to force the Father’s hand because He knows, He knows, that He is the Beloved Son of God no matter what happens to Him. No matter if he dash His feet on the stones of suffering. No matter if He walks through the darkness of death. He knows He is always God’s beloved son. And He will live His life therefore in self-giving love. He won’t do super-human feats, flying off templetops like Superman. No! He will do the most powerful feat of all, the most incredible deed of all, He will give His life away in love of others.

Jesus knows. He knows it is not about Him. It’s not about feeding Himself, taking care of Himself, having power over others, having others wowed by His powerful deeds. It’s rather about doing everything for the glory of God His Father. It’s about obedience to the Father’s will. It’s about bringing about a kingdom of justice, peace, and joy.

These temptations are not just first century temptations. They are also 21^st century temptations. Because you and I live in a world where it’s all about self-promotion, or so it seems, self-aggrandizement. It’s all about making it about me, about me. Watch any athletic event. Someone makes a great play. They strut their stuff and beat their chest, “Look at me!” Or, watch a reality show (not all of them, but most of them), they’re all about me, navel-gazing, okay? Focused on the self.

The danger of modern communications, and there are many blessings to modern communications, especially social media. The danger is it is so easy to cross the line from sharing with others in friendship, to tooting our own horn, to thinking it’s all about me and everything I do in my life. We come together to remember that is not the case, that the Devil wants to tempt us to focus inward instead of outward to the God whose hand feeds us, to the God whom we are called to worship, to the God who loves us as His own beloved sons and daughters. No matter what happens to us we are always, by our baptism, filled with the Spirit, God’s beloved children.

That wonderful jewel of the first reading this morning reminds us it is not about what I have done, but it is rather about what God has done and what God continues to do. Notice the context of that first reading is the Harvest Festival. Every year at the harvest those who are blessed by the fruit of the land bring the first fruits in a basket to the Lord God. They present it to the priest. They give it away. And then, they remember what God has done in the past for them – that God has made of them a mighty people, saved them from slavery in Egypt, welcomed them into the Holy Land by being with them, providing for them through the desert, and giving them that land of promise as a gift. And so every year at the harvest, giving away the first fruits is a reminder “The land is not mine, it belongs to God.” Even this fruit of the harvest is not my doing, it is by the gift of God, by my ability to do this, that God has produced this fruit. To remember, indeed, that is God doing, and what God is about, that is most important.

All of us suffer in our lives at times from spiritual dementia. We forget what God has done for us – the many ways that God has blessed our lives. And that’s why week after week after week, we come to remember what God has done. To remember that God has given us the greatest gift of all – the gift of His own Son. And not only to remember that but to be strengthened by that very gift of Jesus’ body and blood. And as we do so, we bring our gifts as a sign of the gift of ourselves to God, recognizing it’s not about me holding on to my gifts, but it’s about me giving my life away as a gift to others. And that when my life – our lives – are joined to the Greatest Gift, Jesus the son of God that there is no temptation we cannot overcome, that in Him and through Him, we have the power to reject the lies of the Evil One. And we have the power to always remember our dignity and that no one can strip or rob that dignity of us as God’s beloved sons and daughters.

Father Joseph Jacobi

Fifth Sunday of Ordinary Time

Link to today's readings

Isaiah 6:1-2A, 3-8 + Psalm 138 1-2,2-3,4-5,7-8 + 1 Corinthians 15:1-11 + Luke 5:1-11

Click here to listen to this homily

[There is no transcript for this homily]

Second Sunday in Ordinary Time

Link to today's readings

Isaiah 62:1-5 + Psalm 96 1-2,2-3,7-8,9-10 + 1 Corinthians 12:4-11 + John 2:1-11

Click here to listen to this homily

[There is no transcript for this homily]
Delivered at Holy Spirit Catholic Church in Mustang, Oklahoma by Deacon Paul Lewis

The Epiphany of the Lord

Link to Today's Readings
Isaiah 60:1-6 + Psalm 72:1-2, 7-13 +  Ephesians 3:2-3a, 5-6 +  Matthew 2:1-12

Click here to listen to this homily
Delivered at Holy Spirit Catholic Church in Mustang, Oklahoma

Contained in the womb of Mary is the One whom the heavens cannot contain. He empties himself of the privileges of his divinity in order to enter another world, the world where human beings dwell. The Son of Mary is a stranger in a strange land. He comes from another world, the world of the divine Trinity. 

The Eternal Word of God leaps down from his heavenly home to pitch his tent among humankind here on earth. He crosses the border between the eternal and the temporal to become forever a part of human history.Thus, the Son of God is THE Outsider, the one who comes from a place beyond our understanding. He is the Ultimate Stranger, an immigrant from a land so foreign that no one alive on this earth has yet seen His eternal home. The strangers from the east are the ones who recognize the presence of the Stranger from another world whose star rises brightly in the night sky. Outsiders who live beyond the borders of Israel are the ones who see how the Outsider has gotten inside our human flesh, how the radiant glory of the Divine shines forth in a little child. 

The magi come to adore the newborn King, while King Herod plots to destroy him. Feeling his throne threatened, Herod’s fear grows like a gathering storm. In fact, King Herod embodies the normal human reaction to the stranger, which is fear. Herod feels threatened by the newborn King and is deeply troubled by what this helpless child might do to Herod’s position of power. Thus, he slyly tries to use the magi to obtain information on the whereabouts of the child. 

When the magi go home by another way, Herod, full of fury, sends soldiers to slaughter the children in Bethlehem. Fear is the driving force behind Herod’s cruel slaughter of helpless babes. Herod is so full of fear that he cannot see what the strangers from the east see—that the Son of God has taken flesh as the Son of Mary, that the radiance of God’s eternal love is now embodied in Jesus. However, before the soldiers can kill the newborn King, Joseph, warned in a dream of the impending danger, takes Mary and the child and they flee to a foreign land, Egypt. 

The Holy Family then experience what many families today experience in our country and throughout the world—what it is like to be strangers in a strange land, to start life over in a place far from home where language and culture are different, to be looked upon with suspicion because of being an outsider. The Holy Family survive their sojourn in a foreign land because some Egyptians recognized in the face of this refugee child the face of God’s son and gave him and his parents welcome. 

The most potent divisive force the early Church faced was how to welcome the stranger. The first Christians were Jewish-Christians, and they thought everyone who wanted to join the early Church should become Jewish first before becoming Christian. In fact, the leaders of the early Church in Jerusalem feared the Gentiles from other countries whom the apostle Paul was bringing into the Church. The Jewish Pharisee Paul had to first be knocked off his high horse before he could ever begin to recognize Christ longing to be born in the Gentile people. But once Paul had the scales removed from his eyes, he saw clearly what God was doing in and through Christ His Son. 

In Christ, Paul began to see that the Gentiles are now co-heirs of the kingdom, members of the same body of Christ. In Christ, the strangers who are Gentiles are also co-partners in spreading the Gospel. This revelation rocked the early Church to its core. However, because Peter, James, and the other leaders of the first Church Council in Jerusalem were converted and accepted Paul’s teaching on this matter, the early Church grew and flourished. Otherwise the Church most likely would have folded up and died. 

St. Paul saw how all people are estranged from God because of sin. But because Christ chose to become one with us and die for us, we are strangers and aliens no longer. We are now fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God. Paul patiently and wisely worked at uniting a Church made up of people who were strangers to one another because of language and culture. Paul preached this truth—there is something stronger than our differences, and that is our unity in Christ:  Whether Jew or Greek, woman or man, slave or free, all are one in Christ. In today’s world where so many Americans are fearful of strangers from other lands, this feast of Epiphany shows us a way out of the darkness of this fear. We can choose to walk in the darkness of this fear, and like Herod, try to get rid of those who we feel threatened by, or shut the doors of our hearts to them. Or we can walk in the radiant light of Christ the Stranger, of recognizing him present in the strangers who come to our parish, our city, and our country.

These strangers from other lands come bearing gifts for the living body of Christ here. Not gold, frankincense, and myrrh but other kinds of gifts. The gift of Faith—a confident, humble trust in God. The gift of Family—rejoicing in the gift of new life and in the God who gives life. The gift of Joy—celebrating the many gifts of God and thus remembering that God is in charge, so the crushing weight of worry and anxiety is lifted. When we welcome the stranger and receive the gifts they bring, we allow the light of Christ’s love to shine through us and lead us to our heavenly home.

Fr. Joseph A. Jacobi

SOLEMNITY OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY, MOTHER OF GOD

Link to Today's Readings
Numbers 6:22-27 + Psalm 67:2-3, 5-6,8 + Galatians 4:4-7 + Luke 2:16-21

Click here to listen to this homily
Delivered at Holy Spirit Catholic Church in Mustang, Oklahoma

St. Paul packs so much into a few short verses from his letter to the Galatians. The living word of God passed on to us through the ages from the hand of Paul is so rich and full we can hardly take it all in, much less understand completely what it means.

In the fullness of time, Paul says—in other words, at the “right time”, or in “God’s time,” God sent His Son, born of a woman. How can this be, we wonder, the Eternal Son of God, the One through whom all things were made, becoming part and parcel of his own Creation? How can this be, we ask, the One whom the entire universe cannot contain now being limited to Mary’s womb, dependent upon her for his very life?

St. Paul does not tell us how this can be but does tell us why, why the 2nd Person of the Divine Trinity would humble himself to become human like us. So that we might be made into members of the family of God, so that through Him we might become adopted sons and daughters of God. The Son of God becomes the Son of Mary so we might become sons and daughters of God. What a marvelous exchange! What an incredible mystery of faith!

The proof of our dignity as God adopted children, as St. Paul puts it, is that the Spirit of the Son has been poured into our hearts.  The same Spirit that overshadowed Mary at the Annunciation and made the miracle of His conception in the womb of Mary possible; the same Spirit that descended upon the adult Jesus in the waters of the Jordan and propelled him into his ministry of teaching and healing and casting out demons; the same Spirit which raised Jesus from death to new life; the same Spirit breathed by the Risen Jesus upon his terrified followers cowering in a locked room after his death. This Spirit brings the powerful presence of the Crucified and Risen Jesus into our small lives, so we can relate to the almighty God as His Beloved Son does, by addressing Him as “Abba, Father.”  

Imagine being invited, even empowered by the Spirit to be one with the Son 
in order to relate to the Father as Jesus did—in absolute confidence and trust. How can this be?  We creatures made of dust now vessels of the eternal God, impregnated with the Spirit of the Risen Lord, empowered to have the same relationship of intimacy and trust with God the Father as Jesus did. It is a mystery beyond our ability to understand completely, beyond our grasp.

Paul does not stop there—because the Spirit of the Risen Jesus has transformed us into adopted children of God, joined us forever to the Son of God, we share in the Son’s inheritance—the fullness of life, eternal life. This is our inheritance, this is our destiny.

Wow! Talk about packing a lot into a few short verses. It’s like the eternal God coming to us in something as small as a newborn babe. How to take all this in?  How to understand it all?  


Mary, the Mother of God and our mother in faith, teaches us how to respond
to the Word of God which goes beyond what we can initially understand or comprehend. Mary, the Mother of the Eternal Word made Flesh, shows us how to allow God’s living word to take our flesh and to come to life in and through us.

In the Gospel of Luke, whenever Mary receives the word of God, she never understands it completely upon first hearing, but rather surrenders to is and reflects upon it in her heart. She takes a stance toward God’s word which is the way faith-filled Jews do: God’s word is to be received even if it cannot be understood in the moment. Then slowly, with time and reflection, pondering this word in one’s heart, the full meaning will unfold. This is what faith looks like…..

This is exactly what Mary did upon receiving the Archangel Gabriel’s incredible message that she was to become the Mother of the Son of God. She had questions about what this meant and how it was to come to pass—“How can this be”—but she eventually surrendered in trust, not understanding in the moment completely what was being asked of her, but trusting that God will reveal to her over time the meaning.

At the birth of Jesus again she receives the word of God from a different sort of messenger—shepherds coming to adore her child—who inform her that indeed he is the promised Savior of the world. Once again, she does not understand completely what this means or how it will come about, but she does not reject the message of the shepherds. Instead, she reflects on these things in her heart—she holds their words in her heart and ponders them.

When Joseph and she finally find the 12 year-old Jesus in the temple, after a frantic 3-day search throughout Jerusalem, and he tells them: “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”, the Scriptures tell us that they (Joseph and Mary) did not understand what he said to them, but that his mother kept all these things in her heart.

As our mother in faith, the Blessed Virgin Mary teaches us a life-giving way to respond to the Word of God when we do not understand it. Her example goes beyond the American way of understanding before committing. We Americans are so pragmatic, which can be a good thing, as we try to understand what is being asked of us before acting. But that is not the way of faith, not the way of the Gospel, as our mother teaches us. Rather, trusting the One who speaks to us his saving word, we surrender our lives into his hands in faith, with her, trusting that He will reveal in the future more clearly what is being asked of us.
That the living word of God, which may not make sense to us today, will unfold its meaning in our lives if we will but be patient and reflect upon this life-giving word.


What might Mary, our mother in faith and Mother of Mercy, be inviting us to reflect upon in our hearts, during this Jubilee of Mercy? How would she want us to receive Her Son, who comes to us in hidden and mysterious ways which may not initially understand?

Perhaps, with Mary’s help, we are being called to ponder the following words of her Son, to hold these words as a treasure in our heart throughout this New Year…..

When you welcome the stranger, the King of Kings says, you welcome me.
When you visit the prisoner, the Crucified Lord says, you visit me.
Forgive and you will be forgiven….give and gifts will be given to you.
Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.
Be merciful just as your Father is merciful.


Fr. Joseph A. Jacobi

Christmas Mass

Link to Today's Readings
Isaiah 9:1-6, 14 + Psalm 96:1-3, 11-13 + Titus 2:11-14 + Luke 2:1-14

Click here to listen to this homily
Delivered at Holy Spirit Catholic Church in Mustang, Oklahoma

The coming of the Son of God into the world seems to be so small, so little. This is not how God had to come into the world to save humanity, but how God chose to come. The Son of God is born as an infant like any other infant, a baby boy born into a world so rough and so cruel, a child utterly dependent up his parents for care and sustenance. He was so small, so little.

No wonder a people who had long awaited his coming, who had kept their hope alive over centuries awaiting the coming of the promised Messiah, did not even notice him when he came. There is not even room for him, no one will make room for him. Only those living on the margins of society, shepherds sleeping with their sheep in the field, shepherds who smell like their sheep, are tipped off by angels that the Savior of the world has been born. The sign given them is hardly a sign of greatness—you will find an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. A manger of all places, an animal’s feeding trough.

From the human point of view, the Incarnation, the Son of God taking our flesh, is a crazy plan, choosing people too little and too vulnerable. But the result, in God’s wisdom, is what is best for us: being born among us, being raised among us, he came as one of us, as our brother. As God with us, Jesus shone a light on our true dignity and God’s might in humility.

The Savior of the world was entrusted to the natural processes of human life, in the most vulnerable of hands, in the most vulnerable of ways, so that God’s glory and salvation would not overwhelm us, but accompany us. So that God’s glory would accompany us in solidarity with the suffering of all of us small and little people, in order to teach us the value of human life and the greatness of each life. No one is too little, too small, too insignificant to share in God’s plan.

As the Savior’s birth teaches us, God is often closer and smaller than we think. So God uses people who are not in the spotlight, who hardly anyone sees, seemingly insignificant people, to bring the greatness of his Son’s life and love into the darkest corners of the world.

A number of years ago when I was stationed at another parish, one of the daily Mass attendees, a local baker, would weekly bring me a box of cookies. She was shocked when I told her one day to stop bringing me cookies, that I was giving them up for a while.  

I told her that the daughter of some long-time friends of mine had been stationed in Afghanistan, thru her work with the Department of Defense, and that her parents were very concerned about her safety. I told the parents of this young woman that I would pray for her, and to make sure I would remember to pray for her on a regular basis, I would give up all sweets during her 6-month tour of duty in Afghanistan. Each time I felt a craving for something sweet, I would automatically be reminded to pray for her.

When I told the baker of the cookies this story, she thoughtfully replied: “Then I should send the cookies I usually bring to you to this young service woman in Afghanistan.” And so she did, and thus began something truly remarkable. The gift of homemade cookies, still delicious even after a couple of weeks travel by mail, would arrive at a remote outpost in Afghanistan, and my friends’ daughter would then share them with everyone else in her company. Soldiers and Department of Defense workers would feast on treats from halfway round the world and feel connected with their homeland. In doing so, they came to know if a very real way they were not alone nor were they forgotten.

My friends’ daughter shared with me upon her safe return from Afghanistan that those monthly boxes of cookies were a powerful sign of God’s presence in a place where God seemed to be absent.

Such are the small yet powerful ways that God chooses to communicate God’s bottomless love to us. My parishioner the baker with her cookies wanted to show my friends’ daughter and those stationed with her what God wanted them to know in those anxious days—You are loved.  You are not forgotten.  Feast on the sweet tenderness of my love. God did not use a thunderbolt from heaven to tell them that, but a far subtler, sweeter means of communication that could risk being overlooked altogether as something as ordinary as, well, some extraordinarily delicious cookies.

St. Ignatius of Loyola has a memorable phrase for thinking about God’s presence all around us. Ignatius said:  “God labors and works for me in all the creatures on the face of the earth.” His point was that one of the most common ways God comes to us is through other people.

Because the Son of God left the safety and security of his heavenly home to forever make his home with humanity on this earth, we know this to be true: One of the most common ways God comes to us is through other people. Ignatius invites us to see how our daily experiences of receiving love, even in the smallest acts of human kindness, reveal God’s deep, abiding care for us. For like a secret admirer, God employs incredible creativity in filling our lives with seemingly unsigned love notes.

God not only comes to us in the smallest of ways but also in the smallest of people. For Jesus teaches us that he comes to visit us through the most vulnerable ones, the ones who go unseen by many because they live on the fringes of society—the most marginalized of our sisters and brothers, the least ones. Our eyes are not well trained to see the Son of God coming to us in those around us, especially those people the world pushes to the margins, those people the world chooses to not even see nor acknowledge that they exist.

Jesus clearly teaches in chapter 25 of Matthew’s Gospel that whatever we do for the least of our sisters and brothers—those who are hungry or thirst or naked or a stranger or sick or in prison—we do for him. When we welcome and love them, we are welcoming and loving and serving him. It is no small thing to recognize Jesus coming to us through the most vulnerable people on this planet, for Jesus assures us that our salvation depends upon it.

During this Extraordinary Jubilee Year, which will last until the end of November next year, Pope Francis challenges us to practice the Corporal works of Mercy. Not just to do these good deeds, but to “encounter Christ living in the poor.” Knowing things about Christ is different from knowing Christ.

The same holds true for Christ living in those who are the least of our brothers and sisters. Knowing things about them, statistics about hunger, or statistics stating that there are more people in prison per capita in Oklahoma than almost any other State, is very different from coming to know the people behind the statistics.

In other words, get to know the person who is hungry, or get to know the family who are refugees on the run from terror, or hear the life story of a prisoner behind bars. And in coming to know them, to encounter Christ in his littleness, in his smallness, coming to us through them.

We come to this table to be nourished by the Real Presence of Christ, the greatest gift Jesus gave us—his body and his blood. His presence to us here gives us the grace to be present to Him coming to us in our daily lives in the most ordinary of ways, in hidden, small ways.

What looks like something so small here—a little bread, a cup of wine—is transformed by the power of God into a divine gift—the Gift of God’s Son being born in us once again, coming to life in and through us.

So that strengthened by such a gift, we can welcome him coming to us each day in the most surprising of ways, longing to find room in our lives to welcome Him.

Fr. Joseph A. Jacobi

3rd Sunday of Advent

Link to Today's Readings

Zephaniah 3:14-18A + Isaiah 12:2-3,4,5-6 + Philippians 4:4-7 + Luke 3:10-18

Click here to listen to this homily

Delivered at Holy Spirit Catholic Church in Mustang, Oklahoma

If the prophet Jeremiah speaks of Justice and the prophet Baruch speaks of how Mercy is the companion to Justice, then the prophet Zephaniah is the prophet of Joy. Joy is not necessarily happiness. We know that all too well. They are not the same thing. Happiness is a feeling and, with all feelings, can come and go, be here today and gone tomorrow, like kids who unwrap gifts and then the next day, gifts are no longer the source of happiness. But Joy is something different. It is something that predures, that endures, that lasts, it is that spirit which sustains and lifts us up right in the middle of unhappy times. Joy is that quality of life, that vision of creation that the loving hand of God is in all things and providing for all God’s creatures, even during times of loneliness and boredom, misery, or despair.

Joy, therefore, shines forth in a people of faith who believe in the resurrection of Christ, who know the power of God in Christ to transform even death into new life. Therefore, Joy flows from the gift of the Risen Christ, which is the gift of His Spirit, and in fact, the Church names one of the Fruits of the Spirit as Joy itself. One of the signs of the Holy Spirit working in our lives is Joy itself.

So during this Advent season, as we prepare to receive more fully the Son of God into those parts of our lives where perhaps we have not given Him entrance before, we do so by recognizing the lies we live by that can suck Joy right out of our life. Because Jesus is the Savior, the One who comes to set us free from the lies that keep us in darkness, He wants to bring us the fullness of His Joy. We can only receive that gift and live out that gift if we first bring into the light the lies that keep us in darkness.

One of the lies we live by in our culture is that we are created to possess things and the more things we possess, the more joy-filled we’ll be. We are led to believe that if I can hold in my hand this thing—the newest best gadget, a new car, a new house, whatever it may be—then I will be full of Joy. And this lie, which the tempter tempts us to live by therefore leads us to take a bite out of the fruit, a deadly fruit, called envy, which means we look at what other people have and we never notice all the gifts we have. We want or desire what that person has, never grateful for all that we have been given. Envy sucks Joy right out of one’s life.

Another lie we live by: If I can possess this person, if I can have a relationship with this particular person, they will satisfy all my needs, and then I will know Joy. This lie leads to the deadly fruit, the deadly sin of jealousy—a sin that blinds us to the truth that no one is the possession of anyone else. Actually, God has created every single human being for Himself, not to be possessed or owned by another human being, but ultimately as someone made to return to the One who made them, who created them, who belongs to Him, the Creator of All. You know, when we try to hold on to another person as “mine”, try to limit their freedom, what happens is jealousy displaces all the Joy that resides in a relationship with another.

So the Savior of the World, the One who is constantly coming into the world and trying to break into our lives, He wants to set us free from the lies we live by. As the Light of the World, He also sheds light on the darkness of language that keeps us bound up, keeps us really limited in our Joy—language like “my” or “mine”—that kind of language has the capacity to drain us of Joy itself. Because the Redeemer of the World, the One whose birth fills the Angels and Christmas with Joy—resounding Joy—teaches us that our Heavenly Father did not create us to possess things or to possess others but created us to be possessed by Joy, to be possessed by the One who is Joy.

This is why Saint Paul can speak those powerful words that some people scratch their head at, you know? “Rejoice in the Lord always.” Always? You’ve got to be kidding me! But notice the key words: “Rejoice in the Lord always.” It’s only in this ongoing relationship between us and the Savior of the World, allowing Him to come to us and set us free from the lies we live by, that we can truly be filled with Joy. And have you ever noticed that the most joyful people to walk the face of the earth are the ones who have surrendered themselves completely to the Lord of Joy?

Think about Francis of Assisi, an Italian who lived way back in the 13^th century, who literally gave everything his father had given him back to his father and embraced Lady Poverty and is recognized as perhaps the most joyful person to ever walk the face of the earth, who found delight in the gifts of God each day, the simple gifts that many don’t notice: Brother Sun giving him warmth, Sister Moon lighting the way in the dark of night, the creatures of God who brought him much Joy, and the relationships he had with his brothers and others that sustained him throughout his life.

Or, think of Mother Theresa who went and left everything she knew behind to go to the poorest place on earth, the slums of Calcutta, who served the poorest of the poor there, who on her last visit to the United States—I can still remember seeing her face on T.V.—this old woman bent over by age and arthritis. If you looked in her face—radiated Joy, just was permeated with Joy. This woman who had surrendered her entire life to the Lord of Joy and had surrendered to Him present in his broken body, the poor whom she reached out to touch in Joy and whom she recognized was His presence in her midst.

Both Francis of Assisi and Theresa of Calcutta teach us the way to Joy. The way to encounter the source of Joy, and to be nourished by Joy, is to love Christ Jesus, to surrender to Him, and to especially allow Him to come to us, present in the poor.

It’s always fascinating to me to listen to the stories of American youth who go off to third world countries to serve the poor on mission trips. They come back and one of the first things I hear them say is they are just blown away by the joyful spirit of the people they went to serve and who have nothing compared to all that we have materially, but who have everything because they recognize each day that the hand of the Lord feeds them and that they have to trust that somehow the Lord will provide for all they need. It is out of this trust, this surrender to the Lord in His goodness that they are able to be full of gratitude for even the smallest of gifts, the tiniest of things.

So, what shall we do, we who have so much? What shall we do to rejoice always in the Lord? Saint John the Baptist, the one who prepares the way for the coming of the Lord, he tells us. It’s pretty simple. Someone’s hungry? Give him bread. Someone is in need of one of your cloaks and you have two of them? Give it away. In other words, to share what we have, to recognize it is a gift given to be given away. And in giving the gifts we have away to others who need them, to recognize that in fact we are receiving as we give the Lord who comes to us in His need, in the faces of the poor. And then Joy is multiplied! In the giving away of what we have, we are more ready to receive more gifts from the Lord and in the one who receives—gratitude for all that is given from the kindness of hearts that overflow in love.

You and I come here Sunday after Sunday to encounter the God who has made us for Joy and out of Joy, to encounter a God who rejoices in His people, a God who through His son Jesus Christ, has expressed His delight in all that He has made, especially in human beings created in His image, a God who comes to us in this celebration and in the simplest of ways: a little bread, a sip of wine that we recognize as the greatest gift of all, the living presence of the Risen Lord, nourishing us, strengthening us, filling us with Joy, so that we might always be people of gratitude for even the smallest gifts. Because, people who are grateful, who are thankful, are people who are full of Joy. And, Joy is the surest sign of God’s presence in the world.

Father Joseph Jacobi