Once a year, I devote myself to taking care of my younger brother whom many of you have seen attending Masses at this parish. Because he is living as if he were any only child, I try to give his parents a break each year while reaffirming my commitment to the celebate life by taking care of a child one week each year and giving thanks that someone else takes care of the child for the other fifty-one. This year, both Julian & I retreated to Arizona for the opportunity to catch a couple baseball games with the "Men in Blue" and take a train through the Grand Canyon. After spending the week with Julian, I came to learn more about baseball statistics than humanly possible. I also asked myself why a fourteen year old is spending so much of his time watching Fox News Channel and CNN instead of the Cartoon Network or anything else on television.

How can parents take this? How can anyone endure the same grind, over and over, day after day, knowing that the end is in sight but appears light years away? For me, the answer to that question comes from the fifth chapter of Matthew's gospel (a text we read from Ash Wednesday), which implores us not to let the left hand know what the right hand is doing, to live our lives of service as if it were a secret so that we do not boast about the Catholic life we lead. And as good or as bad as I think I have it at times, I think about the parents who have to take care of the kids on a daily basis without fanfare or glory, knowing that the true reward of their hard work comes from the life well lived by their children.

Today's gospel reading, obviously, concerns the doubts that we place in our Lord, our world and our own lives themselves. Because we do not often see the immediate results of what we do, we can often cast doubts upon our own abilities to lead. Because we do not often perceive God's response to our prayers as immediate, we often cast doubts upon the efficacy of God's relationship to us in the world. Because Jesus Christ does not stand before us, in the flesh, to show us his pierced hands or feet, many of us might doubt whether he truly has risen from the dead and whether that death has any bearings in our lives. You go to Church every week, you raise your kids every day, you serve the Church as a spiritual parent every day and the pattern becomes so routine that you forget or doubt what you are doing, not realizing the grace coming to Mass provides in the world or in your life.

If in the world of faith, every Catholic truly believed in Christ's life-saving sacrifice, our church in the Second Week of the Easter Season would be just as full as Easter Sunday. If we all believed, we would have no doubt and we would dedicate our entire lives to God in order to place God first, in front of everything else. If we believed, the problems of the world would become secondary to our true purpose of life, namely, to prepare ourselves to spend the rest of our existence with God. During the Holy Thursday each Church year, it is customary for the Holy Father of the Church to reaffirm the value of the Catholic priesthood by offering words of support during the difficult times of each age. In addition to serving as the Roman Pontiff, the Vicar of Christ and all the other titles associated to his name, the pope is also responsible for serving as the shepherd of all priests throughout the world, offering us encouragement in ministries we offer all of you. At this particular 2008 Holy Thursday Liturgy, Pope Benedict implored the priests of the world to remove all doubts from the daily ministries they lead, to put God first in their lives, and to cast away the ways of the world in order to focus on the ways of God. The Holy Father preaches,

"What a priest does... in celebrating the Eucharist is to serve, to accomplish a service to God and a service to mankind. Christ's worship of the Father was His total giving of Himself for mankind. The priest must become part of such worship, of such service.

"Thus, the word 'service' includes many dimensions. (It implies) the correct celebration of the liturgy and of the Sacraments in general. (It) also means closeness, it requires familiarity, (but) such familiarity also brings a danger: that continual contact with the sacred may become a habit for us. Thus we lose our reverential awe. Conditioned by habit, we no longer perceive the great, new and surprising fact that He Himself is present, He speaks to us and gives Himself to us.

"(Service) means, above all, obedience. Humanity's temptation is always that of wanting to be completely autonomous, of following only their own will and of insisting that only thus will we be free, that only through such limitless freedom can mankind be fully realized and become divine. Yet it is precisely thus that we run counter to the truth. We are free, if we share our freedom with others... if we obey the will of God.

"Our obedience is believing with the Church, thinking and talking with the Church, serving with her."

"El sacerdote debe 'servir'; en la celebración eucarística, 'sirve,' realiza un servicio a Dios y un servicio a los hombres. El culto que Cristo rindió al Padre consistió en entregarse hasta el final por los hombres. El sacerdote debe integrarse en este culto, en este servicio.

"De este modo, la palabra 'servir,' (implica) la recta celebración de la liturgia y de los sacramentos en general, realizada con participación interior. "El 'servir' significa también 'cercanía, familiaridad,' esta familiaridad comporta también un peligro: que lo sagrado, con que nos encontramos continuamente, se convierta en rutina. Así se apaga el temor reverencial. Condicionados por todas las costumbres, no percibimos el hecho grande, nuevo, sorprendente, de que Èl mismo esté presente, nos hable, se entregue a nosotros.

"(Servir) significa sobre todo obediencia. La tentación de la humanidad es siempre la de querer ser totalmente autónoma, seguir sólo la propia voluntad y considerar que sólo así seremos libres; que sólo gracias a una libertad sin límites el hombre sería completamente hombre, llegaría a ser divino. Pero así nos ponemos en el lado opuesto de la verdad. (Sólo somos libres si) compartimos nuestra libertad con los demás y si obedecemos a la voluntad de Dios.

"No nos anunciamos a nosotros mismos, sino a Èl y su Palabra… Nuestra obediencia es creer con la Iglesia, pensar y hablar con la Iglesia, servir con ella."

Sometimes the problem with being a Catholic, let alone a priest, is that this familiarity of the faith becomes so second-nature to us that the "fresh car smell" associated with something new fades away and so does the reverence that is placed upon it. Like many of the "throwaway" songs we hear on the radio or programs we watch on movies or television, we often begin to lose our focus on God and then we begin to doubt. The desire of secular things often takes precedence of the things of God. Mass attendance starts to wane. The desire to practice the faith becomes less desirable. And the next thing you know, the faith in all but two continents begins to wane throughout the world and the doubt of Christ's resurrection eventually becomes replaced by whether we care at all about what Christ has done for us.

The problem of being a spiritual parent in today's age is that the message that we are called forth to bring to this age runs very contrary to the customs and traditions of the people that live today. Pope Benedict calls this type of secular lifestyle that of relativism, a belief that attaches itself to me because I believe a certain way of life is right for me. Instead of seeking direction from a spiritual source, the relativist seeks direction from the self and the self only. The heretic views of a fifth century cleric named Pelagius echoed the same thought: Salvation can be achieved without the aid of the divine. St. Augustine fought that view some 1500 years ago. Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI fought that view today. As Catholics who have chosen to return back to this liturgy a week after Easter, we are all challenged to fight this heresy in today's age as well.

As the shepherds of today's age, whether it be you in your home or me as your spiritual father, we are all called to continue this Easter spirit throughout these next seven weeks and throughout our lives. We are called to remain diligent to the teachings of Mother Church and the bishops ordained to lead her. We are called to put God first, to cast away our own doubts and to believe with all our hearts that Jesus Christ is present, especially in the bread and wind that Christ will change into his body and blood.

Let us uphold these teachings to the best of our ability. Let us remove all doubt about our faith and teach our children these tenets of the faith as well as we can. This is how we become the spiritual parents of today's age.

This is our prayer.