Homilies on the Feast of Saints Joachim and Ann

As we celebrate today the feast of Saints Joachim and Ann, we see the critical importance of the role of parents because these are the people that God raised up to bring Our Lady into the world, to raise her, to teach her, and to prepare her soul so that she would be able to be the Mother of God. They did not know, when they were raising her, that she was going to be the mother of the Messiah; yet, at the same time, there was the expectation. They knew the family from which she would come; they knew that it would be from the tribe of Judah. They knew that they were from that tribe; but certainly, they were just like any of us: We would not expect that God would choose us for such a task. Saints Joachim and Ann certainly would not have anticipated that, either. Nowhere were they told that their little daughter was going to be the Mother of God.

We see, though, the importance of the fact that from the time Our Lady was just a little, tiny baby she had the example and the teaching of two holy parents. They taught her the prayers and the traditions of the Jewish people, and they taught her to love God. Obviously, Our Lady had an abundance of God's grace to help her; but nonetheless, it was her parents' task as well.

Thursday July 26, 2001

Sixteenth Week in Ordinary Time

Reading (Sirach 44:1, 10-15)

Gospel (St. Matthew 13:16-17)

And for all of those who came before, it is just as we heard in the Gospel: "Many a prophet and many a saint longed to see what you see, but did not see it; and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it." Now, one could ask, "Why did God choose Ann and Joachim? Why did He not choose some of these other holy people that have lived throughout history? Why was it not one of the prophets or why was it not one of the Old Testament saints?" We do not know the answer to that other than to say, "It is God's choice." He will choose whom He wills at the time that is right, as it is said of Jesus: "In the fullness of time God sent His Son." All we can say in this case is that in the fullness of time God sent the Lord's mother. Therefore, God sent the two people that He chose to be her parents.

At the same time, we can look at all the ancestors of Our Lady and the necessity of all of them. Sometimes, it may be easy for parents to think that they are just on a treadmill, running and running; nothing ever seems to get accomplished, it is always the same thing: You get up and run every day, you go to bed, then get up the next day and do the whole thing over again. It is providing three meals a day, cleaning a house, going off to work, all these things. And what good is it doing? It is doing the greatest good in the entire world because it is serving and forming the consciences of human persons for the next generation and for generations following that. The work of parents is absolutely critical to society and to the Church. The work that God has chosen for the majority of Christian people is to be married and, thereby, to be parents.

So, when you look at the vocation, we can see the absolute dignity of it when we take it to an extreme and look at the case of Saints Ann and Joachim. We can see the necessity of it there because we say, "Well, they had to bring Our Lady into the world, they had to form her, they had to guide her and teach her." We can see the critical importance of parents when we see it in that light.

You might look at it and say, "My child is not Mary or Jesus, so is it as important?" The answer is "yes." When it comes to equality of persons, your children are radically equal with Our Lady in their humanness. They are just as important in God's eyes. In the work of salvation, God chose Our Lady to be the mother of His Son; He has chosen you and your children for His work, as well. Just because your daughter will not be the Mother of God and your grandchild will not be the Messiah does not make it any less important. (You can be grateful for that, actually. Imagine what it would be like to have the responsibility of raising the Mother of God and being grandparents of God Himself. It is an awesome thing, but it is a rather frightening thing at the same time.)

What God wants of your children and your grandchildren, we do not know; but He has chosen you as parents to be part of this mystery, of this work which is His. He has chosen you to accomplish that and do not ever, for one split second, think that this is a worthless endeavor or that this is somehow a lower kind of thing or that it is less than something else. It is not. It is a vocation that is filled with dignity and blessings and it is critically important. We need to be able to see that. We can look at Ann and Joachim and see the importance of their role as parents of Our Lady. Those of you, who are parents, ponder that. Look at it from that point of view. Look at it from the point of view of Our Lady and Saint Joseph, and the importance of their role. Absolutely everything that you can say about them you can bring back to yourself and you can say the same - the only difference is the role that your children are called to perform in God's Providence; otherwise, everything is the same. The importance of your task is exactly the same as the importance of Saints Ann and Joachim. It can never be undermined and it can never be done away with.

So praise God for parents and for grandparents because that task is so critical. It is the task of prayer, the task of being an example, and grandparents have to be doing this as well. The wonderful thing of being a parent is that it never ends - ever; even in Heaven, you are still going to be a parent; even in Heaven, you will be praying for your children, your grandchildren, your great-grandchildren and so on. Only when we get to Heaven will we be able to see God's Providence in why He chose you for this task of being a parent; in why He chose your children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren for what He is going to do with them; and you will know that you have been chosen to be a part of God's providential work for the salvation of the world.

Note: Father Altier does not write his homilies in advance, but relies solely upon the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

This text was transcribed from the audio recording with minimal editing.

Friday July 26, 2002

Sixteenth Week in Ordinary Time

Reading (Jeremiah 3:14-17)

Gospel (St. Matthew 13:18-23)

The people of Israel, when they would have heard these words from the prophet Jeremiah: "In those days they will no longer say, 'The ark of the covenant of the Lord!' They will not think of it, or remember it, or miss it, or make another," these would have been unthinkable words. Remember that the ark was the holiest thing in all of Israel. It was the throne of God; it was the mercy seat; it was the place where the Ten Commandments were placed. They had some of the manna in it, and it had the staff of Aaron the high priest in it. It was considered the single most sacred object that the Israelites possessed. So to think that no one would speak of the ark anymore, that they would not even miss it [was unthinkable].

Yet, one can look around and see what is happening. For over 2,500 years now, the ark of the covenant has not been seen. The people in the Orthodox Church in Ethiopia claim that they have it because there was a temple that was built on Elephantine Island in the Nile River and there was a place there for an ark. But that had to have been, I suspect, not the actual ark, but rather a replica because we read in Maccabees that the prophet Jeremiah (the same one who wrote this) took the ark up to Mount Nebo, put it into a cave, and covered up the doorway. It says that no one will find it until the tribes of Israel are gathered together again. Toward the end of the world the ark is going to be found, the actual real one.

In the meantime, nobody really misses it. You do not hear much about it from the people of Israel. Even though they know fully well what the Ethiopians claim - that they have the ark - the Israelites pay very little attention to it. It does not bother them that they do not have the ark. It does not bother them that they do not have the temple. A few of the Hassidic Jews certainly are concerned about it, but that is all. Most of the Jewish people are not interested in trying to get the temple back and have the worship of God in the temple and all the sacrifice of the animals and so on.

So we have to ask, "What exactly does this mean, then? Why isn't it a problem?" It is because there is a new ark and there is a New Jerusalem. All of the tribes are indeed gathered together, and that is the Church. The ark is Our Lady. And the ark is seen, as Saint John saw, up in Heaven; it was a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. She has been assumed into Heaven, into the royal, heavenly, divine throne room. She is the place where God chose to dwell. And now He dwells in the New Jerusalem, because this is exactly what we were told: "At that time they will call Jerusalem the Lord's throne." The Lord is enthroned right here on the altar, right in the tabernacle. The tabernacle is the tent, and that is exactly what He used to dwell in from the time of Moses all the way to the time of Solomon. He dwelt in a tabernacle, in a tent, and He went with the people wherever they would go. So the Lord is with us in the New Jerusalem, which is the Church, because we hear that exact thing: "At that time they will call Jerusalem the Lord's throne; there all the nations will be gathered together to honor the Name of the Lord at Jerusalem." That is precisely what we have in the Catholic Church: all the nations gathered together into the new and heavenly Jerusalem to be able to honor the Name of the Lord.

Now, the other part is what we have not yet seen: "There they will walk no longer in the hardness of their wicked hearts." For those who are seeking to live in holiness, everything is already here right in the Church to be able to become saints, to be able to put the hard-hearted wickedness away. But even there, most people do not want to live that. They want to be able to say that they are residents of the New Jerusalem but they do not want to live it. We need to embrace it because the time is coming when the Lord is going to purify things - and I think we can say that it has already begun. But it is just at the beginning for the purification of this new and heavenly Jerusalem. And so if we are going to walk in the hardness of our hearts, we will find ourselves outside of the New Jerusalem because the Lord will not tolerate that. He has tolerated it for a long time; the day is coming when He will not.

So we need to make sure we are looking to the Lord, that we are striving to live holiness, that we are striving to put away the wickedness and the hardness of our hearts so that we can live according to the new way with Jesus Christ, that we can live as Our Lady did, who is that tabernacle of the Lord; and even today, as we celebrate the feast of her parents, to look at these two extraordinarily holy individuals who were called to the married state and who became the grandparents of the Son of God. These are the people we can look to and say, "It is not impossible. They were able to live holiness under the Old Covenant. We have the New Covenant, the new ark, the New Jerusalem." It's all there for us, and it is anything but impossible because the Lord has done it all. All we need to do is choose it and walk in His path and choose to live in holiness of heart, in holiness of life - to reject the sinfulness, the wickedness, the hardness of heart, and open our hearts to the Lord to follow the good shepherd that He promised He would appoint - ultimately, that shepherd is Christ Himself - and to follow Him through Calvary to eternity with Himself.

*This text was transcribed from the audio recording with minimal editing.

Monday July 26, 2004

Saints Joachim and Anne

Reading (Sirach 44:1, 10-15)

Gospel (St. Matthew 13:16-17)

In the Gospel reading today, Our Lord pronounces His disciples blessed because of what they were able to see and to hear, which of course means that they were able to see the Messiah and they were able to hear the Word of God. It is indeed a great blessing if we were to just stop and think for even a split second about the blessing the apostles had to be able to be with Our Lord, to live with Him, to hear Him, to see His example. What an incredible blessing they were given!

Yet, at the same time, we have to be able to look at our own selves and see the blessing that God has given to us to be able to know the Word of God, to be able to receive Our Lord in Holy Communion, to be able to be united with Him through the sacraments and in the Church, and even to be able to be alive at this time. It is actually in some ways a far greater blessing to be alive now than it would have been then, whether that was for the apostles or whomever, because we have the full teaching of the Church and we have the example of the saints. We can look to the apostles who had to make that astounding act of faith in Christ and we can build upon that. So the privilege we have is in many ways even greater than the privilege they had.

But, at the same time, we see that the exact same thing is expected. God is going to expect that we, like they, will make this act of faith and that we will live according to what it is that we profess. God has made promises, and He is going to fulfill every last one of those promises. The timing, of course, is His. The people He is going to choose to do what He needs to do is entirely up to Him, but the fact that He will fulfill them and that for today He has chosen us means we have an obligation to be able to live according to the promises God has made.

And so we look, for instance, at our saints today, Anne and Joachim, the parents of our Blessed Lady. The holiness of this married couple was exceedingly great because they believed what God had told them. It is not that God necessarily informed them of anything, appeared to them, gave them any kind of extraordinary knowledge of what was going to be happening through them, but rather they knew the promises because of Scripture – and they believed. It was not that they were running around saying, “The Mother of the Messiah is going to be born of us,” – we do not even know if they knew that that was the daughter to whom they gave birth – but what we know is that they were faithful to God because they believed, first of all, in Him, and secondly, in the promises He had made. Therefore, they were faithful and they were filled with love for God. It is precisely that love for God which was rewarded with the greatest gift, the gift to give birth to the Mother of God and the gift of having their Grandson, Who is the Incarnate Word of God. Did they even understand that at the time? We have no idea, but the reality is still there that God fulfilled His promises through them.

For generations, the people of the Old Testament were waiting for the Messiah, but God chose the people whom He would and He raised up Anne and Joachim specifically for that purpose. He has raised us up today specifically for His purpose. Whether it is in our day that His promises will be fulfilled, that, again, we do not know; we can reason to it, but we still do not know for sure. But regardless of whether it is now or in the future, what we do know is that God has chosen us to be alive right now during this time. He has chosen us to have knowledge of Him, to have faith in Him, to love Him, and to be saints in our day. That is exactly what He wants. Anne and Joachim were in love with God and with one another precisely because of their faith in God. They were not worried so much about whether the promises would be fulfilled in them or even in their time. They were only concerned about loving God and being saints in their own day. That is exactly what we need to be concerned about: loving God and being saints. That is what God is looking for from us, and it is what the world needs more than anything else – saints, people who love God – because that is what will change the world.

So we need to really look at this and be able to say, “Blessed are your eyes and blessed are your ears,” not because of the filth that we get to see and hear if we just even walk out on the street these days, but because this is the time that God Himself has chosen for us, that in the midst of all the unfortunate stuff we get to see and hear He has given us the knowledge to know Jesus Christ, to be able to be united with Him in the Eucharist, to hear His words spoken through the Scriptures, to know Him and to love Him in a world which neither knows nor loves Him. This is a great blessing, and it is a wonderful opportunity for each of us to be able to be saints, to know and to love and to serve God. That is what He has chosen us to do and all He is asking now is our fidelity and our love. It is precisely in doing this that the promises God has made will be fulfilled in us, maybe not the promises regarding the whole world, but the most important promise for each of us anyway – that we will be able to go to heaven, that we will inherit everything He has promised, and that we will see Him face-to-face for all eternity.

*This text was transcribed from the audio recording with minimal editing.

Tuesday July 26, 2005

Seventeenth Week in Ordinary Time

Reading (Exodus 33:7-11; 34:5b-9, 28)

Gospel (St. Matthew 13:36-43)

In the first reading today, we hear about Moses going out to the meeting tent and praying with the Lord, and how the Lord used to speak to him face to face, as one man speaks to another. Then we hear about another situation that happened sometime later, that is, Moses climbs Mount Sinai and asks the Lord to allow him to see His face. The Lord tells Moses to stand in the hollow of the cliff and the Lord would pass by. As He passes by, He pronounces His name, Lord. Technically it is “Yahweh,” but it is translated here as Lord – the Lord, a merciful and faithful God who is generous in forgiving. Moses, as he has this experience of God passing by, prays that even though this is a stiff-necked people who had violated God, that the Lord would come with them, that He would stay in their midst.

Today, as we celebrate this feast of Saints Anne and Joachim, we also realize that something similar took place. God in His mercy has chosen to dwell among us, and He has chosen that there would be human means by which He would come into this world. So we celebrate today the feast of the parents of our Blessed Lady, the grandparents of Jesus. These good and holy people are the ones God had chosen to bring into the world the most incredible and wonderful human person ever created. Our Lord, of course, was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit; Our Lady was not. She was conceived in the normal course of marriage.

We see, then, that God has chosen two human persons to bring about this wonderful, wonderful woman and to use them as the means by which He is going to make a new meeting tent. Moses used to go out to the meeting tent and God would descend upon it. Joshua would stay there praying all day long. Our Lady is the perfect meeting tent, the place where God came down, and there is where He dwelt. Our Lady would stay there with Him all day long in prayer. We see how this mystery is completed and perfected, because God has not only allowed Moses to see His face but He has allowed all humanity to see His face. And He continues to be with us. In Our Lady, He was present in a very hidden way so that only she knew initially, and then Saint Joseph. But for us, we know that Our Lord is right here in the Blessed Sacrament. He is here so we can come and speak to Him face to face anytime.

If Moses would go out to the meeting tent and pray, and Joshua would simply remain, we also see the importance, then, of that interior prayer – not merely saying prayers, but entering into the heart and being one with God in the depth of our being in that mental prayer, that contemplative style of prayer. If we know that God is right here, why would we not want to talk to Him? Why would we not want to be with Him? What we have to realize is that God has planted that good seed in our heart that we hear about in the Gospel, but the enemy of our soul has also planted some seeds. The weeds, unfortunately, are the ones that are sitting there telling us, “You don’t need to pray, stay away from there. You’ve got better things to do, don’t waste your time! Why would you want to sit there like that for a long time? Why go to the chapel?” On and on and on the lies go. Unfortunately, we listen to them.

It is time we make sure that we are helping the good seed to grow and that we start trampling down the weeds rather than the other way. The way that is going to happen is to spend time with the Lord. Moses could not do what he was called to do unless he spent the time with God. Joshua could not do what he was called to do unless he spent the time with God. Not one single one of us is ever going to be able to even begin to accomplish what God wants us to do unless we spend the time with Him, unless it is Him doing the work. It is foolish for us to even try. That is what the Psalms say: If the Lord does not build the house, in vain do the builders labor. We spin our wheels trying to do all kinds of things, whereas if we would spend the time with Him and then let Him work through us, everything would be accomplished according to His Will. It is necessary that we do not just simply say we want to do God’s Will, but that we spend the time with Him so that we know His Will and we are willing to allow Him to work in us and through us so that His Will shall be accomplished.

As we meditate upon these mysteries of God dwelling among us, among His chosen people, we realize that in the Eucharist, like He was in Our Lady, He is present inside of us; and we, like Our Lady, need to spend time with Him there. And like Moses and Joshua at the meeting tent, Our Lord is here in the tabernacle – tabernacle, by the way, means “tent” – so He is right here in our meeting tent, in the tabernacle where we meet Him anytime that we come to be with Him. He is there in the Blessed Sacrament so that we can come to Him and speak to Him face to face, as one man does with another.

*This text was transcribed from the audio recording with minimal editing.

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