Saturday, August 3, 2013

"THEY ALL ATE AND WERE SATISFIED"



Homily for August 5th: Matt. 14:13-21.
          As sun starts to sink and the shadows lengthen, Jesus’ disciples approach him with an urgent request. “This is a deserted place and it is already late; dismiss the crowds so that they can go to the villages and buy some food for themselves.”
          Jesus’ response surprises us: “There is no need for them to go away; give them some food yourselves.” He was having fun with them – teasing them. Jesus knew perfectly well what he was going to do.
          Not realizing this, the disciples point out that what Jesus has asked them to do is impossible: “Five loaves and two fish are all we have here.” To which Jesus responds simply: “Bring them to me.”
          When the disciples have done this, Jesus looks up to heaven, blesses these hopelessly inadequate supplies, and gives them to the disciples to distribute to the crowd. “They all ate and were satisfied,” Matthew tells us, adding: “and they picked up the fragments left over – twelve wicker baskets full.” But of course: there were twelve men doing the distribution.
          What does this tell us? Two things. First, when we entrust our pitifully inadequate resources to the Lord, they are inadequate no longer. Second, when the Lord gives, he gives not only abundantly, but super-abundantly. We come repeatedly not because the Lord limits his gifts, but because our ability to receive them is limited.
          The early Christian community loved this story so much that we find it told six times over, with variations, in the four gospels. The reason is clear. It reminded Jesus’ friends of what he does in the Eucharist. We offer him a little bread and wine – and these modest gifts come back to us transformed into his Body and Blood: all his goodness, all his love, all his compassion, patience, and purity. And when have him, we have everything!  

Thursday, August 1, 2013

THE RICH FOOL

Homily for August 4th


THE RICH FOOL
18th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C.  Ecclesiastes 1:2; 2:21-23; Colossians 3:1-5, 9-11; Luke 12:13-21.
AIM: To move the hearers to deeper conversion.

AWhat profit comes to a man from all the toil and anxiety of heart with which he has labored ...? All his days sorrow and grief ... even at night his mind is not at rest. This also is vanity.@ Is that good news? Hardly. The book from which those words in our first reading are taken, Ecclesiastes, has as its constantly repeated refrain the words: AVanity of vanities! All things are vanity!@ Ecclesiastes has been called the most cynical book in the Bible. It contains the bad news that we need to hear to prepare us for the good news brought to us by Jesus Christ.
The bad news is that life is indeed empty B Avanity,@ as Ecclesiastes calls it B if we organize our lives apart from God. The rich fool in the gospel did that. He made the mistake, which is always fatal, of assuming that possessions and money can guarantee security and happiness. Organizing his life without reference to God, he assumes that his destiny is entirely in his own hands. He never realized that life is not a possession. It is a trust. The man is shocked to discover, just when he thinks he has achieved total security, that life is God=s to give, and God=s to take away. Then, when it is too late, he discovers that the bad news of Ecclesiastes is true. Life lived without reference to God is nothing but sorrow and grief, emptiness and vanity. Jesus= comment is simple and direct: AThus it will be for all who store up treasure for themselves but are not rich in what matters to God.@
Being Arich in what matters to God@ means realizing that there is something more important than getting B and that is giving. The World War II British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill B not an especially religious man B said once: AWe make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give.@ Being Arich in what matters to God@ means remembering that the things we think we own are not absolute possessions. They are gifts that have been entrusted to us for a limited time. Few of us have a century. One day we shall have to give an account of how we have administered this trust. Being Arich in the sight of God@ also means, therefore, organizing our lives not around ourselves, but around the One to whom shall one day have to give our accounting for all he has entrusted to us B and that is God.
The rich fool in Jesus= story did the opposite. He organized his life around his own desires and pleasures. Is there someone here who has done that?  Probably not.  Your presence here at Sunday Mass shows that God does have a place in your life.  The question Jesus= story poses for most of us, therefore, is not: ADoes God have a place in my life?@ The question for us is: AWhat place does God have in my life? Is he at the center? Or have I pushed God out toward the fringe of my life?@   
Catholics who push God out to the fringe of their lives prefer a distant relationship with the Lord. Choosing always to come late to Mass and to hurry away early, they treat God in a way they would be ashamed to treat someone they truly loved, or whose good opinion they valued. If they come to confession at all, the only sin they can think of is how many times they missed Mass. They overlook other serious sins: meanness to those with whom they live and work; hard-heartedness to people who need their help or sympathy; gossip and tale-bearing that tear people down and destroy their good names; spending lavishly on themselves and then tossing God a cheap tip from the loose change that is left over B while complaining that church and charities are unrealistic in their financial demands, and that all we ever hear about in church is money. For such Catholics religion is really a kind of heavenly life insurance policy on which they grudgingly pay premiums, on the principle that you never know when you might need it B and it=s too dangerous to be without it. If your religion is anything like that, you have discovered long since that it brings you no joy.
Let me tell you why. A God who is on the fringe of life will always be a threat to you. He will always be trying to move into the center. If you want your religion to be a source of joy rather than of sadness, something that lifts you up instead of weighing you down, then you must put God at the center of your life. 
Paul writes about such a God-centered life in our second reading.  Addressing adult converts, he says that when they emerged from the waters of Baptism, AYou were raised with Christ.@ The new life given to us in Baptism is meant to be centered not on ourselves but on God. It gives first place not to getting, but to giving. That means, Paul says, that we must Aseek what is above, where Christ is seated on the right hand of God. Think of what is above, not what is on earth.@ 
More than one person here in this church today knows from personal experience what Paul is talking about in that second reading. God can never be a threat to you. He will never try to encroach on a part of your life which you have reserved yourself. Because there are no fenced off corners in your life, where God is not allowed. For you God is at the center, not on the fringe. 
People who put God at the center of their lives have a religion not of law, but of love: a faith that is a source of joy in good times, and of strength in times of suffering and trial. Paul writes of such people: AYou have died@ B died, he means, to self-centeredness B Aand your life is hidden with Christ in God.@ Such people live their lives not merely with reference to God. They live their lives for God. As a consequence they experience what Paul calls in his letter to the Philippians Athe peace of God that passes all understanding,@ as (4:7). 
Do you want that peace? Do you want a faith that fills you with joy? Which of us does not? To have that peace and joy you must do just one thing. You must allow God to move from the fringe of your life to the center. When you do that, then some other words of Paul from our second reading come true for you: AWhen Christ your life appears, then you too will appear with him in glory.@

PRAYING FOR VICTIMS OF INJUSTICE



Homily for August 3rd; Matt. 14:1-12.
          Herod had thrown John the Baptist into prison, today’s gospel tells us, “on account of Herodias, the wife of his brother Philip.” Herod divorced his first wife, in order to marry the wife of his still living brother Philip, a woman named Herodias. No wonder that John denounced Herod. He had divorced his wife in order to marry his still married sister-in-law. This earned John the Baptist the hatred of two people, both equally unscrupulous: Herod and Herodias.
          Herodias sees her chance for revenge at a drunken party hosted by her second husband, Herod. Aroused by the dance of Herodias’ daughter – unnamed here, but celebrated in literature and in a well known opera as Salome – Herod promises the girl, under oath, that he will give her anything she asks for, up to half of his kingdom. Not knowing how to respond, the girl consults her mother, who tells her to ask for the head of John the Baptist, who was even then languishing in Herod’s prison.
          Aghast at the girl’s request, but unwilling to violate his oath, made before so many witnesses, Herod orders John’s immediate execution, without judge, jury, or trial. It is hard to conceive of something more cruel and unjust than the squalid story our gospel reports.
          Is that all just long ago and far away? Don’t you believe it! The media report similar outrages all the time: Muslims threatened with death, or actually killed, for converting to Christianity; a Christian missionary sentenced to death for preaching Christ in an Islamic country, and saved only by a worldwide outcry; the teenage girl in Afghanistan who last year survived an assassination attempt by terrorists who oppose education for women. Flown to England and nursed back to health, she lived to tell her story recently before a meeting of the United Nations in New York.
          How could we better respond to the atrocity reported in today’s gospel than to pray in this Mass for the many victims of injustice and terror in the world today?

Tuesday, July 30, 2013

“IS HE NOT THE CARPENTER’S SON?”

Homily for August 2nd, 2013: Matt. 13:54-58.
There’s a 19th century hymn, little known to Catholics, which goes like this:
          I think when I read that sweet story of old,
          When Jesus was here among men,
          How he called little children as lambs to the fold:
          I should like to have been with them then.
It’s a nice sentiment. But it hardly corresponds to the historical reality. Most of the people who encountered Jesus found him quite ordinary. “Is he not the carpenter’s son?” they ask in today’s gospel reading. “Where did this man get all this?” And Matthew, the gospel writer adds: “They took offense at him.”  
That remains true today. People encounter Jesus today not in his human body but through his mystical body, the Church – through us, who in baptism were made eyes, ears, hands, feet, and voice for Jesus Christ. He has no other.     
The Catholic Church is human, as Jesus was human. It is mostly ordinary, as Jesus was ordinary. It can be remote, as Jesus was sometimes remote. It can be weak, as Jesus seemed weak to his contemporaries when he refused to use the divine power he manifested in his miracles to avoid crucifixion.
Hidden behind this ordinariness and remoteness and weakness, however, is all the power of God; all the compassion of his Son Jesus; and all the strength of his Holy Spirit, who came in fiery tongues on the first Pentecost to kindle a fire that is still burning; and to sweep people off their feet with a rushing mighty wind that is still blowing.
Most of Jesus’ contemporaries took offense at him. Or as another translation of our gospel reading has it, “They found him too much for them.”
What about you?   

Sunday, July 28, 2013

THE CLOUD, THE DRAGNET



Homily for August 1st, 2013. Exod. 40:16-21, 34-38; Matt.13:47-53.
          “Whenever the cloud rose … the people of Israel would set out on their journey.” This cloud appears repeatedly in Holy Scripture. There was a cloud on Mt. Sinai when Moses received the Ten Commandments from God. A cloud appeared at Jesus’ baptism, and again at his transfiguration. At his ascension “a cloud received him out of their sight” (Acts 1:9). In every case, the cloud is a sign of God’s presence.
          Is there someone here who is in a cloud? It shuts out the sunshine of God’s love. You cannot see the way ahead. God seems to you to be absent. In reality he is with you: hidden, yes, but still close. Surrounded by the cloud of God’s presence and glory, “we walk by faith, not by sight,” St. Paul tells us (2 Cor. 5:7). We come here to ask God to strengthen that faith.
          Today’s gospel reading, about the dragnet cast into the sea, which collects everything in its path, immediately follows the explanation of last Saturday’s parable of the weeds among the wheat. It has the same message. Jesus’ first hearers would easily have understood that message. They were familiar with dietary laws, which separated unclean foods from those they were permitted to eat. Sea creatures without fins or scales were unclean, and hence inedible. So once the net was brought ashore, there must be a selection. The clean fish are put into buckets and taken to market. Everything else is thrown away. “Thus it will be at the end of the age,” Jesus tells us. “The angels will go out and separate the wicked from the righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace.”
          God is not mocked, Jesus is assuring us. The power of evil, of which we see signs daily in the morning headlines, and on the evening news on TV, is temporary. In the end, goodness will triumph, and evil will be burned up in the flames of God’s justice. That too is the gospel. That is the good news.     

SURPRISED BY JOY


Homily for July 31st. Matt. 13:44-46.
          The day labor who unexpectedly finds in his employer’s field a buried treasure that can change his life is living at the subsistence level. The merchant searching for fine pearls is rich. Despite this great difference between them, the two are in other respects alike. Both are surprised by their unexpected discovery and filled with joy.
          The two are alike in another respect as well. Obtaining the treasure each has found will cost each one all that he has. The closing sentence of the parable says this explicitly when it tells us that the merchant “goes and sells all that he has” in order to possess the treasure he has discovered.
          “God’s kingdom is like that,” Jesus is saying. Neither of these two men thinks for a minute of the sacrifice he is making. Both think only of the joy of their new possession. Both know that the great treasure they have discovered is worth many times over what they are paying to possess it. 
          Must we pay a price to be faithful disciples of Jesus Christ? Of course.  And yes, sometimes that price is high. But when we think only of the cost of discipleship, we make our religion grim and forbidding. In these two linked parables Jesus is emphasizing not the cost, but joy at the infinitely greater reward that the Lord gives to all who are willing to sacrifice all for him. 
          Jesus came to bring us that joy. “All this I tell you,” he says in John’s gospel, “that my joy may be yours, and that your joy may be complete.” (Jn. 15:11).

"THE RIGHTEOUS WILL SHINE LIKE THE SUN."



Homily for July 30th, 2013: Matt. 13:36-43.
          “The righteous will shine like the sun in the Kingdom of their Father,” Jesus tells us at the end of his explanation of his parable of the weeds among the wheat, which was the gospel reading last Saturday. That story is about the greatest difficulty for religious belief: the so-called “Problem of Evil.” How is it possible that, in a world created and ruled by a good and loving God, there is so much evil, injustice, and suffering? The weeds sown among the wheat are, Jesus explains, “the children of the Evil One, and the enemy who sows them is the Devil.”
          Why does God tolerate evil in the good world he has created? Our first reading gives us the answer: because “the Lord is a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity, continuing his kindness for a thousand generations, and forgiving wickedness and crime and sin.” But not forever. Today’s gospel reading proclaims the good news that the power of evil is temporary. There will come a time when justice and goodness will triumph. “The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his Kingdom all who cause others to sin and all evildoers [and] throw them into the fiery furnace …”
          When that happens, Jesus says, “the righteous will shine like the sun in the Kingdom of their Father.” We became citizens of that kingdom at baptism. This life, shadowed by trials, suffering, and injustice, and ending with death, is a preparation for a life without end, without suffering; where the deepest desires of our hearts, never fully satisfied in this life, will find fulfillment beyond our imagining; where we shall experience ecstasy, for we shall see God face to face.