Friday, November 29, 2013

"THEY LEFT THEIR NETS AND FOLLOWED HIM."



Homily for November 30th, 2013: Matthew 4:18-22.
          Peter and his bother made their living from fishing. Yet at Jesus’ call they immediately leave their nets and boat and follow him. They were burning their bridges behind them. Why? If we could have asked them, I think they might have said something like this: “You would have to have known this man Jesus. There was something about him that made it impossible to say No.”
The Lord called me 73 years ago, by placing in my heart the desire to be a priest. From age 12 I’ve never wanted anything else. Next April I will have been a priest for 60 years. Have all those years been happy? Of course not. That doesn’t happen in any life. If you ask me, however: ‘Have you ever regretted your decision for priesthood,’ I would answer at once, and without a moment’s hesitation: Never, not one single day. 
          Is God’s call just for religious professionals, priests and nuns? Don’t you believe it! He calls each one of us, as he called those four rough fishermen in today’s gospel. He calls us to walk with him, to be so full of his love that others will see the joy on our faces and want what we have. Christianity, it has been said, cannot be taught. It must be caught.
          “I could never do that,” you’re thinking? You’re wrong. Here is a list someone sent me recently of some of the great people in the Bible. Every one of them had a reason for thinking God could not use them. So the next time you think that God can’t use you, remember: 
Noah was a drunk. Abraham was too old. Isaac was a daydreamer. Jacob was a liar. Joseph was abused by his brothers. Moses had a speech impediment. Gideon was afraid. Sampson had long hair and was a womanizer. Rahab was a prostitute. Jeremiah and Timothy thought they were too young. David had an affair with a married woman and had her husband killed. Elijah was suicidal. Isaiah thought himself unworthy. Jonah ran away from God’s call. Job went bankrupt. Martha was a perpetual worrier. The Samaritan woman at the well was five times divorced. Zacchaeus was too small. Peter denied Christ. The disciples fell asleep while praying. At Jesus’ arrest, they all forsook him and fled. Paul was a religious fanatic. Timothy had an ulcer. And Lazarus was dead! So what’s your excuse? Whatever it may be, God can still use you. Besides, you aren’t the message. You’re only the messenger.
          When you were born, you started to cry, and everyone around you was smiling. Start today (if you haven’t started already) living your life so that when you die, you’re smiling, and everyone around you is crying.

Thursday, November 28, 2013

"MY WORDS WILL NOT PASS AWAY"



Homily for November 29th, 2013: Luke 21:29-33.
          On the next to last day of the year in the Church’s calendar, she gives us Jesus’ words: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” Remembering the boy Samuel’s words in the Jerusalem Temple, “Speak Lord, for your servant is listening” (1 Sam. 3:10), we listen to some of Jesus’ words.
-  To Mary and Joseph, thankful to have found their Son in the Temple after a frantic search, the 12-year-old boy speaks his first recorded words: “Did you not know that I had to be in my Father’s house?” (Lk. 2:49) Already, at age 12, Jesus knows that his Father is God, and not Joseph.
-  What gospel reader does not recall Jesus’ words to Nicodemus: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him may not die, but may have eternal life” (Jn. 3:16)?
-  Which of us has not found comfort in the words: “Come to me, all you who are weary and find life burdensome, and I will refresh you. Take my yoke upon your shoulders and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart. Your souls will find rest, for my yoke is easy and my burden light” (Mt. 11:28ff)?
-  Unforgettable too are Jesus’ words of the terrified young girl just delivered from death by stoning for adultery: “Nor do I condemn you. You may go. But from now on avoid this sin.” (Jn. 8:11)
-  Jesus’ seven last words from the cross have provided inspiration for uncounted thousands of preachers on Good Friday. AFather, forgive them, for they know not what they are doing.@ (Lk 23:34) To the penitent thief, crucified next to him: AToday you shall be with me in paradise (Lk 23:43). AWoman, there is your son …son, there is your mother.@ (Jn. 26: 19f). AMy God, my God, why have you forsaken me?@ ( Mk. 15:34) AI thirst.@ (Jn. 19:28) “It is finished.” (Jn. 19:30)
-  And finally, Jesus’ words to Mary Magdalene in he garden of the resurrection: “Do not cling to me … Rather, go to my brothers …" (Jn. 20:17.)
          Jesus is saying the same to us, right now. 



Wednesday, November 27, 2013

'THE NIGHT IS ADVANCED, THE DAY IS AT HAND."



First Sunday in Advent Year A. Isaiah 2:1-5; Romans 13:11-14; Matthew 24:37-44.
AIM: To proclaim the Advent summons: to live in the light of history=s last hour, and of eternity.

I invite you to embark with me on a flight of the imagination. You won=t have to take off your shoes, or undergo a full body scan or pat down. But I ask you to fasten your seat belt, and bring you seat back to the full upright position.    
Imagine yourself sitting at home watching your favorite evening program on television. Suddenly the screen goes blank. An unseen announcer says: AWe interrupt this program for a special announcement. We take you to the White House in Washington.@ In a moment you are watching the President. Sitting at his desk in the Oval Office he announces an international agreement between the governments of all the major states in the Middle East: Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Israel, the Palestinians, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. Guaranteed by the governments of the United States, Great Britain, France, Germany, and Russia, the agreement provides for swift settlement of all conflicts in that area: an end to hostilities in Afghanistan; cancellation of Iran’s nuclear program, the establishment of a Palestinian state living at peace with its neighbor Israel. The guarantor governments, the President says, have formed a consortium to rebuild Iraq=s shattered infrastructure and provide education for the millions of young Arab people in the area, including girls, embittered up to now by lack of opportunity to live the good life they see daily on television from outside their region.
What a sensation such an announcement would be! How people all over the world would rejoice to know that the fear of war and terrorism was banished, and that the vast sums spent on arms could be devoted to constructive, peaceful purposes.
Is that a dream? Sadly, it is. Yet we find a description of just such a dream in our first reading today. There the prophet Isaiah speaks of all nations coming to Jerusalem. There, in the holy city, the Lord himself will settle all their quarrels and conflicts: AThey shall beat their swords into plowshares ...one nation shall not raise the sword against another, nor shall they train for war again.@
For Isaiah that was not a dream. It was reality. But it was a reality which he knew would be fulfilled only at the end of history. Nowhere in the Bible do we find any reason to expect that time will come within history when there will be no more wars. This should not discourage us from working to limit and, as far as possible, to banish all wars and conflicts B in our communities, in our nation, in the world. At the same time, we are not to entertain unrealistic hopes which can only be disappointed. The abolition of all conflict, and all war, will come only at the end of time. And it will come about not though human planning, but through God=s intervention from without.
When will God intervene? In today=s gospel Jesus tells us that we cannot know. We can be sure of one thing only: that God=s intervention will catch many people unprepared: ATwo men will be out in the field; one will be taken, the other left. Two women will be grinding at the mill; one will be taken, the other left.@ 
How can we prepare? Not by speculation about when the world will end, but by living now in the light of that crucial future event; by living in this world according to the standards of another world. That is what Paul means when he writes in our second reading: ALet us throw off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.@
What are today=s works of darkness? To name them all I=d have to stand here far longer than you would like. Let me give just three small examples. It is a work of darkness when we accept the popular slogan: ADon=t get mad, get even.@  How many conflicts in our world are due to people acting on those words? Had Jesus accepted them, there would have been no Calvary B and hence no empty tomb. If we are his followers, we need to seek not vengeance, but forgiveness.
It is a work of darkness to believe what we are told by the advertising industry: that to be happy we need a never ending supply of the goods and services portrayed daily on television and in the glossy magazines. That is false. Happiness comes not through getting; it comes through giving. People who have never discovered that are poor B no matter how large their houses, or their bank accounts.
Yes, and it is a work of darkness when we tell women in unwanted pregnancies that there is a quick fix. Get rid of it, Honey, and then all your troubles will be over. Every year thousands of women discover, to their sorrow, that after an abortion their troubles have only begun. Shame, guilt, and bitter regrets often continue for months, not seldom for years. Putting away this work of darkness means compassion for women in problem pregnancies: costing, caring support which helps them do what every mother knows, deep in her heart, is right: protect and nourish the human life within them, even and especially when this is costly.
Throwing off those works of darkness, and countless others, means accepting the ridicule of people who call darkness light. Remember Noah, Jesus tells us in the gospel B ridiculed by the people of his day for building a boat hundreds of miles from water. >Building an ark, are you, Noah?= his friends taunted him. >What on earth for? Expecting it to rain?= Oh, they had a good time with old Noah, you may be sure of that. AIn those days before the flood,@ Jesus says in the gospel, Athey were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage ...until the day when the flood came and carried them all away. So will it also be at the coming of the Son of Man.@
For those who are unprepared B for people who live according to the standards of this world, calling darkness light, and light darkness B the coming of the Son of Man will be a shock. They will be like the homeowner, Jesus warns in the gospel, who sleeps soundly while the burglar taps on the mud brick wall of the man=s Palestinian house, to discover the hollowed out place inside where the family=s savings are kept. When the burglar finds the spot, he digs through and takes everything. Too late the homeowner discovers that he has been picked clean.
For those who are prepared, however, God=s final intervention will be a day of joy and fulfillment. These are the people who live in the darkness of this world with their faces turned toward the light of Jesus Christ. AThe night is advanced,@ Paul tells us in our second reading, Athe day is at hand. Let us then throw off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.@
That is the Advent message. We are living in history=s final age. How long this final age will yet last, we cannot know B any more than we can know now long our own personal lives will last. What we can and do know is that this age will end when Christ comes again: not in obscurity, as he came to Mary and Joseph and the shepherds; but dramatically, in an event so momentous that no one will doubt that history=s last hour has struck. 
For those who ignore the Advent message and live for themselves, Christ=s coming will be a day of fear and disaster. For those, however, who are trying to live not for themselves but for Jesus Christ, and for others, his coming will be a joyful encounter with a dearly loved friend B whether this encounter be at our own personal death, or at the end of history. They will be able to say the words of our responsorial psalm: AI rejoiced because they said to me, >We will go up to the house of the Lord.=@
Will you be able to say that when the final hour strikes? Will you be ready when Jesus Christ comes?

Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Proclaiming the Good News: GOD IS NOT MOCKED

Proclaiming the Good News: GOD IS NOT MOCKED: Homily for November 27 th , 2013. Daniel 5:1-6,13-14,16-17, 23-28.           It was quite a party. The Babylonian King Belshazzar kne...

GOD IS NOT MOCKED



Homily for November 27th, 2013. Daniel 5:1-6,13-14,16-17, 23-28.
          It was quite a party. The Babylonian King Belshazzar knew how to do these things right. He brought in all the women from his harem, to be admired by his guests. There were singers and dancers. The wine flowed like water. When everyone in the hall had drunk deeply, he ordered the silver and gold vessels which his father, King Nebuchadnezzar, had plundered from the Jewish Temple at Jerusalem to be brought in, so that they could drink from them to all their pagan gods.
          Then it happened: a scene out of a Hollywood blockbuster. High up on the wall, brightly illuminated by a nearby lamp, a hand started to write three mysterious words on the wall: MENE, TEKEL, and PERES. Suddenly the great hall was silent, the king and all his guests aghast. “Call Daniel,” the king ordered in a trembling voice. Daniel was the bright-eyed Jewish teenager who, we heard two days ago, refused to eat the food sent to him from the king’s table, because it was not kosher. “If you can tell me what those words mean,” the king told Daniel, “I’ll give you the highest honors in my kingdom,” Belshazzar said. “You can keep your gifts, sir, Daniel replied. “I’ll tell you what the words mean.”
          And he did. To this all powerful man, a ruler not limited by any laws or constitution, Daniel said: “You’re finished. Not once in your life did you ever worship the only true God. You’re washed up – and your kingdom too. The God of Israel has sent this hand to tell you that you have been weighed on the scales and found wanting.”
          This whole story from the book of Daniel is not history. It is fable – like the fable about the 6-year-old boy George Washington cutting his father’s new cherry tree with the axe which some stupid fool had given him – and then confessing to his father that he couldn’t tell a lie. He had killed the tree. The fables in Daniel were written to encourage the Jews, exiled and maltreated in Babylon, to remain true to their God and faith. Despite suffering and persecution, the author was telling them: ‘The Lord will protect you. God is not mocked.’
 He is saying the same to us today.  

Monday, November 25, 2013

WHAT PRIESTHOOD HAS TAUGHT ME



[This letter, written at the request of a 29-year-old deacon to help him prepare for priestly ordination, was published in a slightly different version in The Priest magazine for August 2013, pp. 35-39.]

Dear Pietro:
            You have asked me to share with you things I have learned, in 59 years as a priest, which might help you as you prepare to offer yourself to the Lord for service to him and to his holy people as a sharer in the high priesthood of Jesus Christ.
            Let me begin by recounting a story told by our current archbishop in St. Louis, Robert Carlson. Decades ago, when he was Vocation Director in his home diocese of St. Paul, a young man considering going to seminary told Carlson that he needed to go home first and pray about whether he was good enough to be a priest. “I’ll save you some time,” Carlson said. “You’re not good enough.” He was right, of course. God doesn’t call us because we’re good enough. No one is good enough to be a priest of Jesus Christ: not the Curé of Ars, not Padre Pio, not even the Pope. The Lord doesn’t call us because we’re good enough; he calls us because he loves us.
            Never forget that, Pietro. The desire for priesthood which is in your heart has been put there by the One who is love (cf. 1 John 4:8). He wants you to be a messenger of that love to others: through words when appropriate, but always through the example of your life.
            You can never do that unless you are constantly receiving the love that the Lord wants you to pass on to others. This brings me to the first thing that almost six decades of priesthood have taught me. You can’t make it in the priesthood, and you certainly can’t be happy as a priest, unless you are spending time alone with the Lord, every single day. We can all pray when we feel like it. The test comes when we don’t feel like it, yet still set aside time for the Lord. For this we need –
            A Rule of life, centered on prayer. One of the Lord’s great gifts to me is to have had such a rule since I was twelve years old. At that age I joined what Catholics would call a sodality: the Servants of Christ the King. Members promised to follow a simple rule of life, centered on prayer. You can read the details on p. 64 of my autobiography, No Ordinary Fool. Members made an annual report to the sodality’s Director, grading themselves on a scale of 1 to 10, and received from him a friendly note of admonition and encouragement in response. You should have such a rule, for which you must be accountable to a spiritual director.
            Why is this so important? Because it will keep you faithful to the daily prayer time with Lord which every priest needs. There will be many times when you don’t feel like praying, when the time you have set apart for the Lord is dry and nothing but a mass of distractions and prayer seems a complete waste of time. All that is of no importance, provided that you remain faithful to your commitment to prayer, because you have “a date with the Lord.” When you seem to “get nothing out of it,” because of your dryness and distractions, this means that you are making a costly offering to the Lord. And the Lord loves a costly offering.
            Here is what St. Teresa of Avila writes about this, in chapter eight of her autobiography:
Very often, over a period of several years, I was more occupied in wishing my hour of prayer were over, and in listening for the clock to strike, than in thinking of things that were good. ... Whenever I entered the chapel, I used to feel so depressed that I had to summon up all my courage to make myself pray at all. ... In the end the Lord came to my help. Afterwards, when I had forced myself to pray, I would find that I had more tranquility and happiness than at certain other times when I had prayed because I had wanted to. e wants yuoH
, and when the time we have set apart for the Lord is notin      
            Should a daily Holy Hour be part of your rule of life? You must decide that for yourself. I have never done that. I think that those who do, fill up the hour with praying the breviary, the rosary, and other devotions. That’s not my scene. The one universally applicable rule for prayer is this: pray as you can and not as you can’t. For decades I have sat in silence for a half-hour before Mass, waiting on the Lord. I pray the Office of Readings and Morning Prayer after Mass. That is a 75-80 minutes spent with the Lord, a half-hour of it in what the books call contemplative prayer. Later in the day I pray the rest of the Divine Office; and I also spend time invoking the prayers of more than twenty Saints and Blesseds for various people and intentions.
            Another spiritual practice which I strongly recommend to you is “the practice of the presence of God.” I write on page 87 of No Ordinary Fool about resolving as a new seminarian to remember the presence of God every time I went up or downstairs. Today I say one of the holy names at each step: Jesus, Mary, Joseph. Because of this practice, constantly renewed over the span of 65 years, I find myself praying the Our Father, the Hail Mary, and one or two other familiar prayers as I walk down a hallway, from one room to another, back and forth to my car – and at many other “empty” times during the day. I don’t consciously start; I just find that I am already praying one of these prayers, quite spontaneously.
            You have mentioned difficulties with celibacy. Well, join the club, Brother! I have had those difficulties almost all my life. In his Life of St. Benedict, St. Gregory the Great says that during the three years Benedict lived in his youth as a hermit, he became so inflamed with desire (a polite word for lust) for an attractive young woman he had known, that he threw off his clothes and rolled in a thicket of thorns and nettles. “He vanquished sin by changing one fire into another,” Gregory says. “As Benedict told his disciples, from then on sexual temptation was controlled to such an extent that he never felt it any more.” The modern reader, living in our sex obsessed society, could be excused for commenting: “Lucky man!”  
            That has not been my experience. Nor is it likely to be yours. After decades of inner turmoil and much chaos in my life, the Lord evidently said: “Jay, you’ve had enough. I’m telling the Devil to lay off.” I say “evidently,” since I knew nothing about this. But gradually, I think it was in my seventies, I realized: “I’m free! Free at last!” The temptations had simply disappeared, and with them the images and videos that used to run in my head. I couldn’t get them back even if I wanted to. How lucky can you be? So don’t be discouraged. Never, ever give up. And keep in mind, when you fail (as we all do at times), what our wonderful new Pope Francis has told us: God never gets tired of forgiving us. It is we who grow tired of asking for forgiveness.
            Will you be lonely in the priesthood? Sometimes, sure. Loneliness is part of the human condition. Through pastoral ministry I learned early on that married people are lonely too. Loneliness comes about because no human relationshipnot the perfect marriage nor the ideal friendship (and how many people have found either?) can fully satisfy the deepest desires of our hearts. Only the Lord God can do that. No one has said it better than St. Augustine: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless, till we find rest in you.” Or, to put it in terms best understood by your generation, we are hard-wired for God.
            As a 20-year-old seminarian, I read something about loneliness which has helped me all my life long:
Turn your loneliness into solitude,
which is the loveliness of being alone with God.
            In my head I realized that was true the moment I read it. Internalizing it in my heart has taken me a lifetime. Read what I write about this on page 298 of No Ordinary Fool.
            Here is something else I read as a young seminarian. It helped me then, and it helps me still:   
           The conversation of the brethren should help and cheer us, but God’s
            voice speaks most often in silence. Keep some part of every day free
           from all noise and the voices of men, for human distraction and the
           craving for it hinder divine peace.
            It is common to see members of your generation going through the day, and half the night, with those ghastly electronic buds in their ears, so they don’t have to endure even a nano-second of silence. How pathetic. Adults are afflicted as well, priests included. I know a priest, more than forty years ordained, who keeps the television on all day and until he retires for the night, listening to some sports event or other. He says that without that background noise he feels restless. He is a good priest. He would be even better if he were able to experience, in silence, the peace of God which passes human understanding.
            So turn off the TV, Pietro. Learn to be content with the presence of God. Turn off the radio in your car too when you are driving, and pray the rosary (the only time, incidentally, when I am able to pray in that way: I wasn’t brought up on the rosary and am not really comfortable with it even today.)
            The priest with whom I live is away this week, and, once the parish secretary has left in mid-afternoon, I have the house to myself. I just love the silence. I have whole shelves full of long-playing records and CDs with recordings of classical music, which I love. I seldom listen to them any more. I prefer the silence. “God speaks most often in silence.”  
            You’re keen to be a good preacher. For that you must read, widely: anything that has substance and value, provided it is not trash. Reading stimulates the imagination. Watching TV kills it: it’s not called the Boob Tube for nothing!
            You will need especially a rich knowledge of biblical images and themes. Read all you can on Jesus’ parables. Allow yourself to be inspired by Paul’s personal witness to the gospel, starting with his conversion story, told three times over in the Acts of the Apostles.
            Don’t neglect the Old Testament. The stories of the patriarchs in the Pentateuch show God doing his characteristic work in every generation: bringing life out of death. He creates new life in the dead womb of the aged Sarah. He repeatedly rescues Joseph from death (from his brothers, from false accusation and from famine in Egypt). HeeHeHHH rescues His entire people at the Red Sea (which the exegetes tell us was the Sea of Reeds). Those stories are part of what Jesus was referring to when he told the two disciples the first Easter afternoon on the road to Emmaus: “O slow of heart to believe all that was written . . .” (Luke 24:25)
            There are rich treasures in the prophets as well: the message of social justice in Amos and others; Isaiah’s call in chapter 6 of his book; the assurance of God’s forgiveness (“Though your sins be like scarlet they shall be white as snow;” Is. 1:18; “Their sins and offenses I will remember no more” Jer. 31:34). I could go on and on.
            Finally, time spent alone with the Lord in prayer is the preacher’s sine qua non. There was a day when the text from John 12:21 was posted inside pulpits for the preacher to see: “Sir, we would like to see Jesus.” That is what people want from us above all. And the people of God, whom we are ordained to serve, have a keen spiritual sense. They can tell whether we simply know about God; or whether we know him as one knows a dearly loved friend – because we spend time with Him. 
            Only if we are spending time alone with the Lord will our preaching manifest joy. Few things are more pathetic that the joyless proclaimer of the good news. How can we maintain joy, not just when our mouths are filled with laughter, and our tongues with joy (to quote the psalmist), but when we journey, as all of us must, at one time or another, through the psalmist’s dark valley? Let me tell you about what works for me: cultivating the prayer of thanksgiving.
            I started to do this as a schoolboy. On my birthday each year I used to spend time in the school chapel. Kneeling, or sitting, before the Lord in the tabernacle, I would write a list of all the reasons I had for thanksgiving. It was always a long list, and it was never difficult to compile.
It is decades since I have done that. But that adolescent practice has made the prayer of thanksgiving easy for me. My greatest reason for thanksgiving today, apart from my baptism, is my joy in priesthood. At age twelve the Lord planted in me the desire for priesthood. From that day to this I have never wanted anything else. Priesthood has brought me joys beyond telling, Pietro. It has also brought me bitter grief and pain. If you were to ask me, however, whether, if I were able to live my life over again, knowing in advance the worst that priesthood would throw at me, I would still choose to be a priest of Jesus Christ, I would answer without hesitation: In a heartbeat! I would change just one thing: I would try to be more faithful, and above all more generous.
            I was ordained a priest over fifty-nine years ago. And I’m still head over heels in love with priesthood. I couldn’t tell you how many times I say every day: “Lord, you’re so good to me, and I’m so grateful.”  Find your own way of saying that, Pietro, and there will be joy in your heart – a joy so intense that you will be able one day to say with me: “If I were to die tonight, I would die a happy man.”
            You probably know the story of the man whom St. John Vianney saw every day in his church, without rosary or book, his lips not moving, his gaze fixed on the crucifix. 
            “What do you do?” John Vianney asked the man one day.
            “I look at Him,” the man replied, “and He looks at me.”
            St. Teresa of Avila calls this silent waiting on God “friendly intercourse, and frequent solitary converse, with Him who we know loves us.”
            Your parishioners won’t always love you, Pietro — though some of them will, probably more than you deserve. Your pastor and your brother priests will find you, much of the time, less than lovable. Your bishop will tell you he loves you. You may find it hard to believe. (Pray for him, and cut him some slack: he receives more critical letters in a week than you will in a year.) But there is One who always loves you. He doesn’t love the ideal person you’d like to be. No. He loves you as you are, right now: with all your faults, and compromises, and sins. It is his love, and his alone, that can enable you to persevere in the priesthood to which he has called you, and to be happy in it.  
            In the priesthood, as in every life, you will experience times when your will is crossed, your self-love wounded, what you think are your rights are disregarded; when you feel put upon, passed over, disliked, unjustly attacked. You will feel the downward pull of ambition, envy, covetousness, lust. There will periods that seem colorless and monotonous, when prayer is difficult, and other people are hard to live with, perhaps impossible. The only way you can survive — and not merely survive but be deeply happy despite all these things — is to spend time alone with the One who loves you more than you can ever imagine, who will always be close to you no matter how far you stray from him or how often you let him down; whose love will never let you go.
His name is Jesus Christ.
In His love I remain always, dear Pietro, your devoted friend and brother,
John Jay Hughes

Fr. Hughes is a priest of the St. Louis archdiocese and author of the memoir,
No Ordinary Fool: A Testimony to Grace (Tate).

THE KEY TO HAPPINESS - THANKGIVING



Homily for November 28th, 2013: Thanksgiving Day.
          On this Thanksgiving day I’d like to tell you about something the Lord moved me to do on my 13th birthday, in May 1941. It has been a source of great blessing to me ever since. I visited the chapel of the small and very spartan Connecticut boarding school where I was being educated. Kneeling, or perhaps sitting, in the presence of the Lord in the Tabernacle, I wrote down a list of all the things I was thankful for. I continued this practice on my birthday for a number of years thereafter. The list was always a long one. And it was never difficult to compile. It always brought me joy.
It is decades since I have used my birthday to compile that list of blessings. But that boyhood practice has made thanksgiving central in my life, and in my prayer. If you are looking right now at a happy man, and a happy priest -- and I can assure you that you are – it is because I have trained myself to say every day, more times than I could ever tell you: “Lord, you’re so good to me. And I’m so grateful.”
And now I have a suggestion for you. Before you start to eat your Thanksgiving dinner today, go round the table and ask each person, young or old, to say at least one thing that he or she is thankful for. You may hear some surprises. Whether you do or not, I promise you one thing that a richly blessed life of more than 85 years has taught me. Thankful people are happy people – no exceptions!

MIGHTY SIGNS FROM THE SKY



Homily for November 26th, 2013: Luke 21:5-11.
          Again, we have a gospel reading about the “End Time.” This Temple which you are looking at, Jesus tells his hearers, will not always be here. It will all be torn down one day. Shocked, the hearers want to know when this will happen. What sign will there be that it is coming?
People have been asking that question ever since. Jesus never answered it. As I told you two weeks ago, there is a passage in Matthew’s gospel where Jesus says that even he has no timetable. “As for the exact day or hour, no one knows it, neither the angels in heaven nor the Son, but the Father only” (Mt. 24:36).  
          One piece of information Jesus does give. The end of all things, and Jesus’ return in glory, will be preceded by disturbing signs. Jesus mentions some of them in today’s gospel: “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be powerful earthquakes, famines, and plagues from place to place; and awesome sights and mighty signs will come from the sky.” Jesus is using poetic, dramatic language to describe a word in ferment, and coming apart at the scenes. Who can doubt that we are living in just such a world today?
          Should these signs make us fearful and anxious? Not if we are living for the Lord God, and for others. Let me tell you about a man who did that. His name was Basil Hume, a Benedictine monk of Ampleforth Abbey in the north of England. The 3 English monks who founded St. Louis Abbey and the Priory School on Mason Road came from there over 50 years ago. Basil Hume was their Abbot when Pope Paul VI reached over the heads of all the English bishops to make him Archbishop of Westminster and later a cardinal. In June 1999, when he was gravely ill with cancer and knew he was dying, Cardinal Basil wrote these words:
                   “We each have a story, or part of one at any rate, about which we have never been able to speak to anyone. Fear of being misunderstood. Inability to understand. Ignorance of the darker side of our hidden lives, or even shame, make it very difficult for many people. Our true story is not told, or, only half of it is. What a relief it will be to whisper freely and fully into the merciful and compassionate ear of God. That is what God has always wanted. He waits for us to come home. He receives us, his prodigal children, with a loving embrace. In that embrace we start to tell him our story. I now have no fear of death. I look forward to this friend leading me to a world where I shall know God and be known by Him as His beloved son.”

Sunday, November 24, 2013

THE WIDOW'S PITTANCE



Homily for November 25th, 2013: Luke 21:1-4.
In a society without today’s social safety net, a widow was destitute. For the widow in today’s gospel to give all that she had to live on for that day was, most people would say, irresponsible, even scandalous. God looks, however, not at the outward action, but at the heart. For God what counts is not the size of the gift, but its motive. The wealthy contributors were motivated at least in part by the desire for human recognition and praise. The widow could expect no recognition. Her gift was too insignificant to be noticed. For God, however, no gift is too small provided it is made in the spirit of total self-giving that comes from faith and is nourished by faith.
Jesus recognizes this generosity in the widow. Even the detail that her gift consists of two coins is significant. She could easily have kept one for herself. Prudence would say that she should have done so. She refuses to act out of prudence. She wants to give totally, trusting in God alone. That is why Jesus says that she has given Amore than all the others.@ They calculated how much they could afford to give. In the widow=s case calculation could lead to only one conclusion: she could not afford to give anything. Her poverty excused her from giving at all. She refuses to calculate. She prefers instead to trust in Him for whom Anothing is impossible@ (Luke 1:38)
This poor widow shows us better than long descriptions what it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. True discipleship will always seem foolish, even mad, to those who live by worldly wisdom. This poor widow had a wisdom higher than the wisdom of this world: the wisdom of faith. With her small gift she takes her place alongside the other great biblical heroes of faith, from Abraham to Mary, who set their minds first on God=s kingdom, confident that their needs would be provided by Him who (as Jesus reminds us) Aknows that you have need of these things@ (Luke 12:30). This widow is also one of that Ahuge crowd which no one can count@ (Rev. 7:9) whom we celebrated on All Saints= Day B those whose faith inspired them to sacrifice all for Jesus Christ, and who in so doing received from him the Ahundredfold reward@ that he promised (Mark 10:30).
Now, in this hour, Jesus is inviting each one of us to join that happy company: to sacrifice all, that we may receive all. He challenges us to begin today!