Welcome to St. Timothy's Catholic Church! Since the 1860's, the Church of St. Timothy has been an essential part of the Maple Lake community by bringing the sacraments and the teachings of the Church to thousands of people. Today, our parish family continues its mission of proclaiming the message of Jesus Christ and nourishing souls with the gifts of his presence and his grace.

At the heart of our parish's life is the Eucharist: both celebrated at Mass and in worship of the Blessed Sacrament outside of Mass in our Perpetual Adoration Chapel. Both these forms of Eucharistic worship are united in a beautiful way, as described by our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI:

"Communion and Adoration do not stand side by side, or even in opposition, but are indivisibly one. For communicating means entering into fellowship. Communicating with Christ means having fellowship with him. That is why Communion and contemplation belong together: a person cannot communicate with another person without knowing him. He must be open for him, see him, and hear him. Love or friendship always carries within it an impulse of reverence, of adoration. Communicating with Christ therefore demands that we gaze on him, allow him to gaze on us, listen to him, get to know him. Adoration is simply the personal aspect of Communion."

We invite you to celebrate with us this friendship with Christ in the Eucharist, and we hope that you find the presence of Jesus alive, in a variety of ways, in all that we do at St. Timothy's.

Minnesota Marriage Website: www.minnesotaformarriage.com

Fr. Michael Izen's Pro-Marriage Homily VOTE YES in November

This past Thursday we had our first meeting regarding the Marriage Protection Amendment.  This is the amendment that you will all have the opportunity to vote for in November.  It states that “Only a union of one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in Minnesota.”  The meeting went well, but there were less than 20 people there.  The lack of attendance can probably be attributed to a number of reasons, but there’s one reason that I fear.  Before I went to the meeting I just happened to be visiting with one of our fine parishioners regarding this effort.  This is a parishioner who is faithful, orthodox and in line with the church, but their reaction to this effort was that it bordered on ridiculous.  “This is so obvious” they commented.  “The church makes it clear, the bible makes it clear… how could people ever endorse anything other than marriage as we know it?”  I was reminded of a famous quote by Edmund Burke: “All that needs to happen for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.”

About 50 years ago many good and faithful people in our country thought it would be ridiculous to actually have to fight to protect the unborn.  After all, who would legislate to legalize the killing of pre-born babies?  Well our country did… 39 years ago.

During and after that meeting on Thursday I began contemplating in my mind whether or not I wanted to make one of my last homilies at St. Timothy’s about a hot button issue like same sex marriage and the marriage amendment.  Then I read the second reading for today’s Mass.  “The body is not for immorality, but for the Lord…the immoral person sins against his own body.  Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit? Therefore glorify God in your body.”  This was obviously important to St. Paul.

I think there are actually two issues here.  First, is the whole matter of same sex attraction and the Church’s teaching on that.  Then, there is the logic behind why we need the Marriage Amendment.  Both might require a little background, but we’ll start with the issue of same sex attraction.  The Church has consistently taught, through Sacred Scripture, through our Tradition, and through Natural Law, that the homosexual act is disordered, our brothers and sisters who struggle with being attracted to the same sex must be loved and must never be discriminated against, but the act itself is a serious sin.

Scripture makes this clear.  The Old Testament and St. Paul himself teach and warn about the evils of homosexuality.  Even Jesus was asked about the meaning of marriage in Chapter 19 of Matthew.  Our Lord begins by responding: “He who made them from the beginning made them male and female.”  This is not insignificant… God never does anything by chance… everything has a purpose.  Because God made us male and female, marriage has a unitive and procreative purpose.  Jesus is quoting from Genesis, where we also hear that God made us, male and female, in his image.  Note that it doesn’t say, God created man in his image and then God created woman in his image.  But rather, that God created us, male and female, in his image.  We best image God in the loving relationship of a man and a woman, because God IS a relationship.  And the completeness that comes from the union of husband and wife is as close as we get to imitating God’s love in this life.  Jesus goes on to remind us that the two become one flesh in the marital embrace.  While the completeness of this one flesh is obvious, there is also the fact that the two become one most succinctly in the gift of children.  As I often say in my wedding homilies, when we look at children we say he has his dad’s eyes or he has his mom’s smile, the two have become one.  Clearly such an accomplishment is impossible with same sex couples.

The Church takes this teaching from Scripture and concludes that marriage is ordered to the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of children.  And so marriage is and must always be between one man and one woman. The Church not only has the authority, but the obligation, to affirm this teaching and to preserve and foster the supremely sacred value of the married state.

Even before Sacred Scripture and before the Church, natural law confirmed this same belief.  The reality of marriage predates any religion or government.  It finds its logic in the complementarity of the human anatomy, as well as the male / female psyche, and in the need to propagate the human race.  Those who wish to redefine marriage want you to believe that what you know to be true in your heart is really just prejudice that you’ve learned from your family, your church, and your culture; but it’s not a prejudice… it’s natural law.  

For thousands of years, governments have recognized this true nature of marriage.  The union of one man and one woman has been universally accepted by civil law as a basic and constitutive element of human society, vital to the human family and the human race.  Marriage is intended to enable children to live in an environment where they can grow and flourish.  The government is called upon to protect that context for the sake of the common good.

This brings us to the marriage amendment which, once again, states:  Only a union of one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in Minnesota.  If you remember one thing about voting for this next November, remember this:  Not voting on the amendment is the same as voting no.  In other words, if you vote for your candidate for president, your congressmen, whatever, but leave the marriage amendment boxes blank … it is the same as voting NO.  So remember to vote yes and let me clarify that as a priest I can encourage you to vote yes on the marriage amendment because this is not a candidate endorsement.  This is issue advocacy supporting a constitutional amendment, and does not threaten our tax-exempt status.  Many will argue that marriage isn’t the most important issue this election year, the economy is more important.  As your priest I would say that marriage is more important.  And as your fellow citizen I would say that if you want a strong economy work for strong families.

There are two lies out there: One is the claim that gay marriage won’t affect normal marriage.  The other is that gay marriage is inevitable.  It doesn’t have to be inevitable, and if the government ever endorses gay marriage it will affect the church and it will affect the truth.  The homosexual view will become the bottom line for the meaning of sex,  separating sex from procreation will become the default for public school sex education, and heterosexual teaching will be discrimination.  We can already find traces of this in our country.  The result will be that it will become harder than ever for our children to make the logical connection between love, marriage, sex and children.

Gay marriage affects everyone because it affects children.  It tells the children of same-sex couples (adopted or otherwise) that one of the two people who made them doesn’t love them.  To say a child doesn’t need both a mother and a father is to eliminate half of the population.  We have to think these arguments thru to their logical conclusion – If a child doesn’t need both a mother or a father, who do we want to eliminate?  Children don’t need fathers?  Children don’t need mothers?  [It’s ridiculous] If it is no longer the ideal to have a mom and a dad, then all of a sudden the 20 year old single guy has even less responsibility when it comes to sleeping around, fathering children, and not sticking around.  If the government endorses the idea that a father is not necessary, then why would a young man need to take responsibility?

Marriage has to be more than this.  The gay marriage movement would like you to think that marriage is about the happiness of adults.  Marriage is not about satisfying adults’ desires; marriage is about children… and uniting man and woman.  To say that marriage can be one thing for believers and something else for nonbelievers implies that the truth about the human person can be manipulated.  This is illogical.

I know this is a longer homily than normal, but there is one last point I would like to make.  The MA is not discrimination.  Today, society privileges the marriage of a man and a woman above other loving committed relationships because it promotes the well-being of children and the common good.  By contrast, same sex relationships cannot produce children and deny the importance to children of a mom and a dad.  Furthermore, government has no interest in regulating romance or love, no matter how committed a same-sex couple might be.  Natural marriage and same-sex unions are not the same and should not be treated the same.  Making a legal distinction between them is completely justified.  We treat different things differently.  The truth is that all people are placed under the exact same restrictions.  People are not legally harmed when they are not given something that, by its very definition, is impossible.

This may seem like a strange topic for one of my final homilies at St. Timothy’s.  And while I’m confident that some of you are thinking Way to go Father, others are thinking,  But I have a child who’s gay or a friend who’s gay. I don’t want to hurt them.  We don’t want to hurt anyone; we need to remember what we are called to as Christians.  Tolerance is not a virtue, if you’re tolerating sin.  As Christians we are called to love… and we’re not doing anybody any favors if our love endorses serious sin.   Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit? You were made for God.  I encourage you to vote yes for the Marriage Protection Amendment in November.  And in the meantime, if you are asked by a fellow parishioner to help support this effort, say yes to that as well.