Friday, October 25, 2013

"LORD, BE MERCIFUL TO ME, A SINNER."



Homily for the 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C.  Sirach 35:12-14, 16-18; Luke 18:9-14.
AIM: To help the hearers trust in God=s mercy, not in their own achievements.

Frederick the Great, King of Prussia from 1740 to 1786, is said to have visited a prison one day. Each of the prisoners he spoke with told the king he was innocent: the victim of misunderstanding, prejudice, or simple injustice. Finally King Frederick stopped at the cell of an inmate who remained silent. I suppose you=re innocent too,@ Frederick remarked. ANo, sir,@ the man replied. AI=m guilty.  I deserve to be here.@ Turning to the warden, the king said: AWarden, release this scoundrel at once before he corrupts all these fine, innocent people in here.@ What better example could we have of the words in our first reading: AThe prayer of the lowly pierces the clouds@?
The story could also serve as an introduction to the parable we have just heard in the gospel about the two men going into the Temple to pray. Both believed in the same God. One went home at peace with God. The other did not. Well sure, we think. Our image of the Pharisees is so negative that the story=s conclusion doesn=t surprise us. For Jesus= hearers, however, the conclusion was not only a surprise. It was deeply shocking. They knew that the Pharisees were deeply religious. The Pharisee in the story was no hypocrite. He really had done all the things he listed in his prayer. 
The Jewish law enjoined fasting only once a year. The Pharisee in Jesus’ parable fasted twice a week. Many things were exempt from the law of tithing. This Pharisee made no use of the exemption: he gave back to God, out of gratitude, ten percent of everything he received. The modern equivalent of the Pharisee in Jesus= story would be a Catholic who goes daily to Mass and Communion, performs many good works, and returns a full tithe of his or her income to Church and charity.
The tax collector, on the other hand, belonged to a class despised by all decent Jews in Jesus= day. Tax collectors worked for the hated Roman government of occupation. They used all kinds of shakedowns and protection rackets to extract money from people. Much of it went into their own pockets. For Jesus= hearers this tax collector was a public sinner on the road to hell. And like the prisoner who confessed to the Prussian king that he really was guilty, the tax collector knew that his bad reputation was well deserved. His visit to the Temple shows, however, that he still believed in God. Unable, like the Pharisee, to point in his prayer to any semblance of a good conduct record, he appeals simply to God=s mercy: AO God, be merciful to me, a sinner.@ 
Though both men believe in God, their image of God is quite different. The tax collector prays to a God of mercy. The Pharisee prays to a God who rewards good people like himself, and comes down hard on bad people like tax collectors.  Jesus addressed the story, the gospel writer Luke tells us at the outset, Ato those who were convinced of their own righteousness and despised everyone else.@ The Pharisee=s image of God was wrong. 
Wrong too was the Pharisee=s attitude. He measured himself not by God=s law, but by those around him. Measuring ourselves against others is always a mistake. If we see, like the Pharisee, that we are better, we become complacent and proud. If we see that we are worse, we can become discouraged. Comparisons with others are meaningless. If others have done better than we have, this may have been because they had advantages we never enjoyed. If they have done worse, this could be due to difficulties of which we have no conception. If you must measure yourself at all, compare yourself not with others, but with Jesus Christ. Instead of looking around at others, and looking down on those whom you consider bad people, place yourself beneath the cross of Jesus. Look up at the One who hangs there. Judged by his standard, we all fall short.
Like both men in Jesus= story, we have come into God=s house to pray, to worship. We want to go home reconciled with God and others, and at peace. To do so we must avoid two common mistakes. The first is thinking that we are so bad that God is angry with us and cannot forgive us. That is wrong. God never stops loving us. No matter how badly we have fallen, God is always ready to forgive. To receive his forgiveness, we need only say, with the tax collector: AO God be merciful to me, a sinner.@ If our sin was grave and deliberate, we need to receive God=s forgiveness in the sacrament of penance, or confession. 
The second common mistake which keeps us from going home reconciled with God and at peace is thinking that we have a credit balance in some heavenly account book which God is bound to honor. That was how the Pharisee thought. God owes us nothing. We owe him everything. Does that mean that God is not generous? That there is no reward for all our efforts to be good? Of course not!  God is unbelievably generous. And Jesus speaks of reward often in the gospels. To experience God=s generosity, however, we must stand before him with empty hands, appealing not to our deserving, but to his mercy.   
That is what the tax collector did. Jesus gives us this story to help us do the same. Let me conclude by telling you what Pope Benedict says about these two men in his book, Jesus of Nazareth [pp. 61f]:
AThe Pharisee can boast considerable virtues; he tells God only about himself, and he thinks that he is praising God in praising himself. The tax collector knows that he has sinned, he knows he cannot boast before God, and he prays in full awareness of his debt to grace. [AGrace@ is the technical term for God=s freely given love, something we can never earn.] ... The real point is ... that there are two ways of relating to God and to oneself. The Pharisee does not really look at God at all, but only at himself; he does not need God, because he does everything right by himself. He has no real relation to God, who is ultimately superfluous B what he does himself is enough.
AThe tax collector, by contrast, sees himself in the light of God. He has looked toward God, and in the process his eyes have been opened to see himself.  So he knows that he needs God and that he lives by God=s goodness, which he can not force God to give him and which he cannot procure for himself. He knows that he needs mercy and so he will learn from God=s mercy to become merciful himself, and thereby to become like God. ... He will always need the gift of goodness, or forgiveness, but in receiving it he will always learn to give the gift to others.@
Happy are we if those words describe us: people who know we shall always need the gift of God=s goodness, and of his forgiveness; and if, in receiving these gifts we learn to pass them on to others. Let me conclude with a personal statement.
When I come to stand before God in judgment one day, I won=t say: ALord, I have celebrated twenty thousand Masses and preached at least as many homilies; I have spent ten thousand and more hours in the confessional bringing your mercy to the people you love beyond their imagining; I have written 15 books and hundreds of articles and book reviews.@ I won=t mention any of that. Instead I shall say one thing, and one thing only:
ALord, be merciful to me, a sinner.@

WARNING -- AND ENCOURAGEMENT


Homily for Oct. 26th, 2013: Luke 13:1-9.
Jesus= hearers tell him about two recent disasters: an atrocity perpetrated by the hated Roman governor, Pontius Pilate; and a construction accident which had killed eighteen unsuspecting people. In Jesus= day people assumed that the victims of such tragedies were being punished for their sins. Twice over Jesus contradicts this view. The victims were no worse sinners than anyone else, Jesus says. But their deaths were a warning, Jesus says: AI tell you, if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did!@ The story which follows, about a farmer and his barren fig tree, drives home this warning.
Fig trees grew wild in Palestine in Jesus= day. A newly planted fig tree takes three years to bear fruit. So when the owner of this fig tree tells his gardener that he has been looking for fruit from it for three years, this means it had been there for six years in all. The order to cut it down was entirely reasonable. The gardener is an example of the incurable optimist. He wants to dig round it, to allow the rain to reach the roots, and to fertilize the tree. Nowhere in Scripture do we find any reference to fig trees being cultivated or fertilized. The gardener is suggesting extraordinary, heroic measures. He agrees with his employer, however, that if the tree is still without fruit after another year, it will have to come down.
The story contains a warning, but also encouragement. God is like the owner of the fig tree, Jesus is saying. God looks for results. There will be a day of reckoning. That is the warning. But God is also patient. He is willing to wait. He will even wait longer than necessary. Behind the figure of the gardener in the story C pleading for one more growing season, for extraordinary, heroic measures C we glimpse Jesus himself. Jesus, our elder brother and our best friend, knows our weakness. If we haven=t done too well up to now, Jesus pleads on our behalf for more time. That is the story=s message of encouragement.
In the gardener=s suggestion to wait one more year, to use extraordinary measures, we see God=s patience and generosity. In the agreement of owner and gardener alike, that if the tree remains without fruit another year, it must be cut down, Jesus warns us of the certainty judgment. 
God’s judgment is not the adding up of the pluses and minuses in some heavenly book. It is simply God’s ratification of choices we make every day: for God, his love, his goodness, and his light; or our choice to reject those things. If we are trying to choose Him, the Lord God who loves us beyond our imagining things, need not fear judgment. We can be confident.

Thursday, October 24, 2013

NO ORDINARY FOOL



[Published in the London Tablet for 21 February 2009, p. 29]
Everybody's reading it!

GAMBLING TO WIN
No Ordinary Fool: a testimony to Grace
John Jay Hughes

            Autobiographies can easily fail. In the spirit of “mistakes were made but not by me,” they can become exercises in self-justification or, even worse, a long-delayed opportunity for debunking enemies and settling scores. Or they can become ponderously tedious, when their authors slot in masses of unnecessary and uninteresting details (“on that flight from Cleveland to New York I left my raincoat on board”) or insist on listing all the celebrities they met at receptions, and keynote speeches they delivered at conferences.  Fr. Hughes keeps beautifully clear of any such self-justification, payback time and tedious detail.

            The subtitle of this autobiography catches its tone.  Throughout, Hughes bears witness to the Lord’s ability to write straight on the crooked lines of human uncertainties and infidelities.  With humility and humour, he describes his struggles with loneliness, sexuality and misunderstanding. Through it all God supported him, thanks to his steady commitment to prayer.

            The son and grandson of Anglican priests and a direct descendant of a United States Founding Father and first Chief Justice, John Jay Hughes was a gifted boy from a privileged background. At the age of 12, he decided to become a priest and after graduating from Harvard University (he includes a hilarious story about President Lowell) sailed for England and did three years of seminary training at the Society of the Sacred Mission, Kelham (near Newark-on-Trent). Ordained to the Anglican priesthood in 1954, he served in several parishes in the United States and spent a year in an Anglican monastery before joining the Catholic Church in 1960.

            Hughes describes the agonising struggle he faced in moving from Canterbury to Rome – a move that brought great sorrow to his father. After a heart-rending farewell, they corresponded over the years but never met again.

            After further studies (which eventually included a doctorate on the validity of Anglican orders), a painful dismissal from a seminary in Austria and years of waiting, he was received in 1968 into the Catholic presbyerate by the Bishop of Münster in Germany.

            Being a “conditional” ordination to the priesthood, it shattered the normal precedent of regarding Anglican orders as clearly invalid and made Hughes an international celebrity. Years before, he had submitted to the Holy Office (now the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) a document tracing his orders, through the two Episcopal bishops who had ordained him, to Old Catholic and Polish National Catholic bishops acknowledged by Rome to be validly ordained.  A positive answer came in 1959 from the Holy Office and it was on that basis that the German bishop later went ahead and conditionally ordained him.

            Twenty years of “exile” ended in 1980 when John May was appointed Archbishop of St. Louis.  At once he asked Hughes to become a priest of his archdiocese and his personal theologian.

            This autobiography engages the reader constantly. Out of his own experience Hughes talks eloquently about prayer, preaching (and the indispensable preparation it demands), and the happiness that comes from being generous in tithing. He tells stories of great suffering, above all the premature death of the mother whom he adored: “My whole world collapsed.  From this blow I have never fully recovered.” Throughout, he witnesses to the joy and high adventure he has experienced in his life as a priest.

            Before being ordained in the Episcopal Church, he went on a private retreat and made his confession to a monk, “a man of shining goodness and deep sanctity.”  “When I had finished my sorry tale of sin,” Hughes continues, “he spoke words I have never forgotten: ‘You’re taking a tremendous gamble offering your life to God as a priest. And God is taking an even bigger gamble in accepting you. You’re just going to trust one another.’”

            The narrative never becomes heavy. Wit and a self-directed irony carry it along briskly. Hughes conveys a sense that life is a wonderful party to be at. He celebrates the centrality of friendship and dialogue in human and Christian existence. The book teems with affectionate vignettes of friends and relatives, like his maternal grandfather who, in the heady days of the 1920s, voyaged annually to France to replenish his stock of linen  underpants (embroidered with his initials by French nuns) and revisit the land of his Huguenot forebears.

            From his time of study in Innsbruck and Münster, Hughes retrieves charming portraits of his professors: Karl Rahner, Walter (now Cardinal) Kasper and Joseph Ratzinger (now Benedict XVI). “Joseph Ratzinger’s lectures on the Church in the summer semester of 1965 were the most beautiful I have ever heard at any of the three universities I have attended on any subject. After every lecture, one wanted to go into a church and pray.”

            God set the agenda for the life of John Jay Hughes, a prodigiously gifted person and priest.  I cannot recommend this autobiography too highly.

Gerald O’Collins

[O’Collins is an internationally celebrated Australian Jesuit, the author of a shelf full of books on biblical and other subjects, and emeritus professor at Rome’s Gregorian University.]

"I DO NOT DO THE GOOD I WANT"



Homily for Oct. 25th, 2013: Romans 7:18-25a
          “I do not do the good I want,” Paul writes in our first reading, “but I do the evil I do not want.” Which of us could not say the same? Paul is stating something about human nature, and our common human experience, which, several centuries later, came to be called “original sin.” Original sin is not a sin which has never been committed before. Such a sin does not exist. All the sins there are have all been committed years, even centuries, ago.
          “Original sin” is something that comes to us in our origen, as sons and daughters of Adam and Eve. They were created by God to live in happy harmony with their Creator, the Lord God. God placed them in a garden, a symbol of order, beauty, and tranquility. Misunderstanding their Creator as jealous of his prerogatives, and wanting to be like God, they disobeyed God’s command and, in consequence, lost the original holiness and justice they had received from God. Moreover, this loss was not only for themselves, but for all their descendants, ourselves included. This loss, the Catechism says, is called “original sin.”
As a result of original sin, the Catechism goes on to say, “human nature is weakened in its powers; subject to ignorance, suffering and the domination of death; and inclined to sin.” (Nos. 417f).  It is this flaw or weakness in our nature which Paul is talking about when he says in our first reading, that though he wants to do good, and recognizes that he should do good – yet nevertheless he does evil time and again. Which of us has not experienced that in our own lives?
          Grieving over this defect or flaw in our nature, Paul cries out: “Miserable one that I am! Who will deliver me from this mortal body?” Only to say at once that there is someone who does bring us deliverance: God himself, through his Son Christ Jesus. “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord,” Paul says.
          The Catechism says that “the victory that Christ won over sin has given us greater blessings than those which sin had taken from us (No. 420). With Paul, then, we too cry out: “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

"I HAVE COME TO SET FIRE TO THE EARTH."



Homily for Oct. 24th, 2013: Luke 12:49-53.
AI have come to set fire to the earth,@ Jesus says, Aand how I wish it were already kindled.@ That fire was kindled on the first Pentecost when the Holy Spirit came down on Jesus’ friends in “tongues as of fire” (Acts 2:3). And that fire is still burning. That we are Catholic Christians in a continent undreamed of by anyone in Jerusalem on that day is proof that the fire kindled then was not lit in vain.
It is our task to pass on the flame to others, so that they may catch a spark from the fire of God=s love burning within us. Christianity, it has been said, cannot be taught. It must be caught. As fire burns it gives light. We are called to be prisms or lenses of God=s light, so that it may shine in a dark world. The inner quality of our lives is determining, right now, the brightness, or the darkness, of that part of the world in which God=s providence has placed us. St. Paul tells us what this means in characteristically memorable words. AShow yourselves guileless and above reproach, faultless children of God in a warped and crooked generation, in which you shine like stars in a dark world, and proffer the word of life.@ (Phil. 2:12-16)  
What is the word of life we have to proclaim? It is very simple, really. We are to proclaim, at all times by the quality of our lives, and when necessary by words, that God is C that he is real. That he is a God of love, who loves each one of us as if, in the whole universe, there were only one person to love; and that he looks for our loving response to his love. And we are called to be witnesses to the existence of a world beyond this one: the unseen, spiritual but utterly real world of God, of the angels, of the saints; the dwelling place of our beloved dead C our true homeland, as Paul reminds when he writes, Awe have our citizenship in heaven@ (Phil 3:20).    
Does any of that come through in your life? Is the Spirit=s fire burning in your heart? If you were arrested tonight for being a Catholic Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you? And if mere physical presence at Sunday Mass were not enough for conviction, would there be enough evidence then?
We come here that the Spirit’s fire may be rekindled if it has burned low within us. Listen then to an ancient prayer of the Church for the rekindling of this fire.
Come down, O love divine, seek thou this soul of mine,
and visit it with thine own ardor glowing;
O Comforter, draw near, within my heart appear,
and kindle it thy holy flame bestowing.

O let it freely burn, till earthly passions turn
to dust and ashes in its heat consuming;
and let thy glorious light shine ever on my sight,
and clothe me round, the while my path illuming.

Let holy charity my outward vesture be,
and lowliness become my inner clothing;
true lowliness of heart, which takes the humbler part,
and o=er its own shortcoming weeps with loathing.

And so the yearning strong, with which the soul will long.
Will far outpass the power of human telling;
for none can guess its grace, till he become the place
wherein the Holy Spirit makes his dwelling.

(Bianco da Siena, d.1434; translated by R.F.Littledale, d. 1890)


 

Tuesday, October 22, 2013

"MY MASTER IS DELAYED IN COMING."



Homily for Oct. 23rd, 2013: Luke 12: 39-48.
AMy master is delayed in coming,@ the unfaithful servant in Jesus= story says. Behind those words lies the thought: >Maybe he=s not coming at all.= Then this unfaithful servant begins to act as if he were the master himself, abusing his fellow servants and breaking into his absent employer=s wine cellar to stage wild parties for his free-loading friends.
The unfaithful servant=s words, AMy master is delayed in coming,@ had special meaning for the community for which Luke wrote his gospel. They believed that Jesus was going to return soon, within the lifetime of some of them at least. As time went on and the Lord did not return, many in Luke=s community were tempted to say: >Maybe he=s not coming at all.=
Jesus= story warns us not to yield to such thoughts; not to forget that we are servants who, one day, will have to give an account of our service. People who live as if there will never be an accounting have broken faith, Jesus warns. For such faithless servants the day of reckoning will be unexpected, and painful. AThat servant=s master will come,@ Jesus says, Aon an unexpected day and at an unknown hour and will punish the servant severely.@
That failure of faith is always a temptation for the Church, and for each of us who are the Church. We yield to this temptation when we use the blessings that God gives us through his Church solely for ourselves. That is why the Church is, and always must be, a missionary Church. We can=t keep God=s gifts unless we give them away. And when we do give them away, handing on to others the faith God has given us, we don=t become poorer. We grow richer. In passing on our faith to others, our own faith is deepened and strengthened.
Whenever in its 2000-year history the Church has forgotten its servant role; whenever the Church has settled in too comfortably and accumulated too much worldly power, prestige, and wealth, it has become inwardly flabby and spiritually sick. What is true of the Church is true also of each of us, the Church=s members. We are servants: servants of the Lord, and servants too of our sisters and brothers. And we are people on a journey: pilgrims underway to our true homeland with the Lord B pitching our tents each evening, as we lie down to rest for the next day=s journey, a day=s march nearer home.       

Monday, October 21, 2013

BE LIKE SERVANTS WHO ARE READY


Homily for Oct. 22nd, 2013: Luke 12:35-38.
          Yesterday’s parable of the rich fool was about a man who thought that money and possessions could guarantee security and happiness. Too late he discovers that life is God’s to give, and God’s to take away. In today’s gospel, Jesus reminds us that we are servants, not masters. We remain servants, even when the master is away. When he returns and finds us still his faithful servants, ready to welcome him, we shall experience a reversal of roles: he, the Master, will serve us.
          But when will he return? We cannot know – save that his return, when it comes, will be unexpected. Here is a modern parable about the unexpected: a young woman’s letter to the man she deeply loves. This is what she wrote:
          “Remember the day I borrowed your brand new car and dented it? I thought you'd kill me, but you didn't. And remember the time I flirted with all the guys to make you jealous, and you were? I thought you'd leave me, but you didn't. Remember the time I forgot to tell you the dance was formal and you showed up in jeans? I thought you'd drop me, but you didn't.
          “Yes, there were a lot of things you didn't do. But you put up with me, and you loved me, and you protected me. There were a lot of things I wanted to make up to you when you came back from Afghanistan.
          “But you didn't come back.
          “We think there is always tomorrow; but one day our tomorrow will be on the other side. Will that tomorrow be happy? We need to decide now, for tomorrow could be too late.”
          One thing alone can guarantee a happy tomorrow: remaining conscious of our servant role by centering our lives on Jesus Christ as ministers of service to our fellow servants: brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ – yes, and ours too.  
         

Sunday, October 20, 2013

THE RICH FOOL



 Homily for Oct. 21st, 2013: Luke 12: 13-21.
          What is the greatest sin in the Old Testament? It is idolatry – worshiping a false god who cannot answer our prayers, because he is deaf, dumb, and blind.  When we do that we are violating the First Commandment: “You shall have no other gods but me.” The gospel we have just heard is about a man who worshiped the false god of money and possessions.
          This false god seduces thousands. God alone knows how many people in our society sacrifice health, family, general well-being, and morality on the altar of this idol. A classic example is the hard-driving American business man who accumulates great wealth, neglecting his family and health as he does so, only to drop dead of a heart attack at fifty-five. 
          The issue is not money. The issue is our relationship to money and possessions. The checkout counters at the supermarkets are full of trashy magazines with reports of wealthy celebrities who have it all – except happiness. The rich fool in Jesus’ parable made the mistake of assuming that possessions and money can guarantee security and happiness. 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. Jesus’ comment is simple and direct: “Thus it will be for all who store up treasure for themselves but are not rich in what matters to God.”
          Being rich in what matters to God means realizing that there is something more important than getting – yes, and far more satisfying: and that is giving. A man who stated this well was England’s World War II Prime Minister, Winston Churchill. No Catholic, and not even an especially religious man, Churchill said once: “We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give.”