Friday, July 4, 2014

A QUESTION ABOUT FASTING



Homily for July 5th, 2014: Matthew 9:14-17.
          To understand the question about fasting in today’s gospel we must know that in Judaism fasting is a way of mourning. It is also a way of expressing sorrow for sin. Still today observant Jews fast on the Day of Atonement, when God’s people fast to express sorrow for the sins they have committed in the past year. The people who ask Jesus why his disciples do not fast are disciples of John the Baptist. He has taught them to fast, because repentance was central in his preaching.
          Responding to the question about why Jesus has not taught his disciples to fast, he replies simply that as long as he is with them, fasting is inappropriate. This is a time not for mourning, Jesus says, but for joy. God has come to earth in human form. Taking up a theme which is frequent in the Old Testament, Jesus refers to himself as the bridegroom. Israel’s prophets said repeatedly that despite the sins of God’s people, God would not always remain estranged from them. He was going to invite them to a joyful banquet, a symbol of unity between God and humans. (See Isaiah 25.)
          This invitation is renewed every time Mass is celebrated. God uses us priests, despite our unworthiness, to extend his invitation: “Everything is ready; come to the feast.” God, the host at this banquet, longs to have you with him. He wants to fill you with his goodness, his power, his purity, his love. 
          He cannot fill you unless you come.
          He cannot fill you unless you are empty.
He cannot fill you unless you confess your need, which means preparing by acknowledging your unworthiness.
          How often have you heard this invitation before? How often will you hear it again? One day you will hear it for the last time. Then you will receive another invitation: to appear before your divine Master, your King, your Creator, your ever- loving Lord.

Thursday, July 3, 2014

THE MESSAGE OF LIFE



Homily for the 14th Sunday in Year A. Mt. 11:25-30.
AIM: To proclaim the sacredness of human life.
          This weekend we are celebrating the 238th anniversary of our country’s Declaration of Independence. It is a noble document. Though only one of the signers was a Catholic, it is a document of which we Catholics can be proud. The second paragraph contains these eloquent words:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”
          In 1776, and for the better part of a century thereafter, there was one group of people in American society, however, who were not deemed worthy of liberty.  People brought here from Africa as slaves, and their descendants, were not free. Our Supreme Court, reviewing a case originally heard here in St. Louis in 1847 and 1850 in the courthouse just west of today’s arch, held in the Dred Scott case that a black person “whose ancestors were ... sold as slaves” was not entitled to the rights of a citizen under our Constitution; and in consequence did not possess the right to liberty which the Declaration of Independence had said was unalienable and self-evident. It took a terrible Civil War and a courageous act by the man whom many believe to have been our greatest President, Abraham Lincoln, to make clear that this dark chapter in our country’s history must end.   
In the two hundred thirty-five years since our Declaration of Independence the circle of those to whom we extended the unalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness was steadily expanded. We welcomed immigrants, we freed the slaves, we extended legal protections protection to workers. After World War I women received the right to vote. The Great Depression of the 1930s brought government aid to the needy and Social Security for the elderly. After World War IIwe ensured civil rights for all and made public spaces accessible to the handicapped. In all these ways America became a steadily more inclusive society. 
      This slow but steady expansion of the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness was reversed in January 1973. The same Supreme Court which said, in the infamous Dred Scott case, that there was no constitutional protection for black slaves, in 1973 ended the legal protection previously given in all our states to society’s weakest and most defenseless members: babies in the womb. And incidentally, those laws protecting the unborn were passed by overwhelmingly Protestant, often strongly anti-Catholic, state legislatures.
          Everyone born since 1970 has grown up in a world in which the killing of the unborn has been legal, respectable, and frequent. The death toll in this slaughter of the innocents now exceeds fifty million. All but a tiny minority of these fellow members of our human family were killed for no other reason than convenience. 
          This is the only world known to every person forty years of age or younger: the world of the quick fix, in which a fellow human being whom I dislike, who gets in my way, who causes me financial or other pain (or conceivably might) may be not just ignored or pushed aside, but killed. A tenured professor at Princeton advocates the view that parents may kill a baby in the first month after birth if they decide that the little one’s life is not worth living. 
          The killing of inconvenient humans is not merely defended today as unfortunate but necessary. It is trumpeted as a sacred right, a magnificent breakthrough in humanity’s upward march from superstition and slavery to enlightenment and freedom, something to be defended by all right-thinking people. Protesters are dismissed as kooks and screwballs, members of the despised “religious right”: evil people as dangerous for our society as armed criminals because they spread the subversive idea that there is a law higher than the laws made by politicians and judges. 

          The attack on life’s other end is already well advanced. The same powerful molders of popular opinion who defend the killing of the unborn as a sacred right (even when this takes place during actual birth, a procedure which doctors tell us is never medically necessary) are now arguing that physicians should be permitted to kill the elderly and infirm when continued life becomes burdensome for themselves or even for others. The burden may be of any kind: mental, physical, or financial.  And in a society in which health care is increasingly dictated by insurance companies, we can expect the financial argument for ending the life of the old people to become ever stronger.                 
          Advocates of euthanasia try to make it attractive by calling it “mercy killing” or “death with dignity.” They bid us look to the Netherlands where the practice is legal, if certain guidelines are followed. They fail to tell us that in that much smaller, far more homogeneous country, where guidelines are much more easily enforced than they could ever be here, up to a thousand people are now killed annually without their consent. 
          Is it any wonder that Pope John Paul II, now a saint, spoke often about “a culture of death”? This culture of death will be reversed only when respect for life at every stage, from conception to natural death, is implanted deep in our citizens’ hearts and minds. Then, and only then, will our country’s laws again protect society’s weakest members: the unborn, the aged, ill, and infirm. Then we may be able to see that even the execution of those guilty of horrible crimes undermines respect for life. 
          Let’s be honest. Which of us doesn’t feel that there are certain crimes so heinous that the perpetrator has forfeited the right to life? But St. John Paul II reminded us many times that society can be protected without recourse to the ultimate penalty. The death sentence is arbitrarily imposed: when was the last time you heard of a wealthy white person being executed? Moreover, since the criminal justice system is a blunt instrument, there is no guarantee that the innocent will never be executed. If you doubt that, consider the following statistics. Since 1973 over 7000 people have been sent to death row nationally. And more than 100 of them have now been released because of evidence either strongly pointing to innocence, or clearly exonerating them.
          The culture of death in which everyone under the age forty has grown up has not yet gained universal acceptance, however. Many people still yearn for something better, the young in particular. How else can we explain the millions who come together on successive World Youth Days to see our Holy Father; to hear, and to cheer, his powerful message of life?  These are today’s “little ones”, as Jesus calls them in today’s gospel: little not in size or importance but in the sense that most of their life span is still ahead of them. They welcome the beautiful message of life. 
          Who today, on the other hand, are the “wise and the learned” from whom the beauty and power of this message is hidden, as Jesus says in today’s gospel? We see them every evening on the television news programs. They write the editorials in our leading newspapers. They head our major foundations and elite universities.   
          Upholding the message of life, insisting as our Founding Fathers did over two centuries ago, that all people have a self-evident and unalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness — not just the strong, the healthy, the fit, but all — is a difficult task, at times heart-breakingly difficult. Today’s enlightened and powerful shapers and molders of public opinion regard this message as quaint and old-fashioned at best, dangerous and pernicious at worst. Today’s culture of death is pervasive. It affects us all. When we grow weary and wonder if it is really worthwhile swimming against the stream of public opinion, Jesus’ words from today’s gospel comfort us. They are the good news for us today:
“Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of hear; and you will find rest for yourselves. For my yoke is easy and my burden light.”

FREEDOM IS NEVER FREE!




Homily for July 4th, 2014.      
             The 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia 238 years ago today pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. Have you ever wondered what happened to them? 
Five signers were captured by the British as traitors, and tortured before they died. Twelve had their homes ransacked and burned. Two lost their sons serving in the Revolutionary Army; another had two sons captured. Nine of the 56 fought and died from wounds or hardships of the Revolutionary War.
What kind of men were they? Twenty-four were lawyers and jurists. Eleven were merchants, nine were farmers and large plantation owners: men of means, well educated, but they signed the Declaration of Independence knowing full well that if they were captured, the penalty would be death.
Carter Braxton of Virginia, a wealthy planter and trader, saw his ships swept from the seas by the British Navy. He sold his home and properties to pay his debts, and died in rags. Thomas McKeam was so hounded by the British that he was forced to move his family almost constantly. He served in the Continental Congress without pay, and his family was kept in hiding. His possessions were taken from him, and poverty was his reward. Vandals or soldiers looted the properties of 8 others [Dillery, Hall, Clymer, Walton, Gwinnett, Heyward, Ruttledge, and Middleton].
At the battle of Yorktown, Thomas Nelson, Jr., noted that the British General Cornwallis had taken over the Nelson home for his headquarters. He quietly urged General George Washington to open fire. The home was destroyed, and Nelson died bankrupt. Francis Lewis had his home and properties destroyed. The enemy jailed his wife, and she died within a few months. John Hart was driven from his wife's bedside as she was dying. Their 13 children fled for their lives. His fields and his gristmill were laid to waste. For more than a year he lived in forests and caves, returning home to find his wife dead and his children vanished.
As we give thanks to God for the courage and generosity of these founders of our beloved country, we need to remember: Freedom is never free!

Wednesday, July 2, 2014

"THOMAS WAS NOT WITH THEM"



Homily for July 3rd, 2014: John 20:24-29.
          On the evening of Jesus’ resurrection, Thomas was not with the other apostles. He did not see Jesus until he rejoined them a week later. Then he uttered what many scripture scholars believe may have been the last words spoken by any of Jesus’ disciples in the original version of John’s gospel: “My Lord and my God!”
Thomas’s experience has an important lesson for us. Faith is not a private me-and-God affair. Jesus taught us this in the one prayer he gave us. It begins not “My Father,” but “Our Father.” We pray as members of a community. We need each other. Why? Here’s one answer.
Dwight L. Moody, founder of the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, tells about visiting an old friend. As they chatted in the evening by the friend’s fireplace, the host said to Moody. “I don’t see why I can’t be just as good a Christian outside the Church as within it.” Without replying, Moody used tong to pick up a blazing coal with tongs, allowing it to burn by itself.  In silence the two men watched it smolder and go out.       
          Dwight Moody believed that the support which believers give one another was an affair of this world only. We Catholics believe more. When we say in the Creed, “I believe in the communion of saints,” we are acknowledging that the community which we entered through baptism extends beyond this world. It includes the saints and our beloved dead. A passage in the letter to the Hebrews expresses this belief. It comes at the beginning of chapter 12. The preceding chapter recounts the great heroes of faith in the Old Testament. The writer portrays them as spectators in an arena, cheering on and encouraging us, who are still competing in the race which they ran before us. Then come these words: 
          “Seeing then that we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which clings so close, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the beginning and end of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising its shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.”
 

"WHY ARE YOU TERRIFIED?"


Homily for July 1st, 2014: Matthew 8:23-27.
          Jesus has spent a whole day healing. He is drained: physically, but also spiritually. Immediately before the start of today’s gospel reading Matthew writes: “Seeing the people crowd around him, Jesus gave orders to cross to the other shore.” Before he can get into the boat with his friends, however, there are two other petitioners he must deal with. The first is a Jewish scribe who tells Jesus he wants to join him: “Teacher, wherever you go, I will come after you.” Jesus tells him there is a price. “The foxes have lairs, the birds in the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” Matthew does not tell us whether the scribe was put off by this or not. Another man, already a disciple of Jesus, says: “Lord, let me go and bury my father first.” To which Jesus replies, no less sternly: “Follow me, and let the dead bury their dead.”
          Only now is Jesus able to break away from the crowd and embark in the boat with his friends. He must be totally exhausted, for he is fast asleep when a violent storm comes up, without warning, throwing up steep waves which threaten to swamp the boat. “Lord, save us!” the disciples cry out as they wake him. “We are perishing!” Awake now, Jesus says calmly, “Why are you terrified, O you of little faith?” Then he rebukes the winds and the sea. “And there was great calm,” Matthew tells us.
          Immediately the disciples’ panic is replaced with amazement, as one of them asks the question that is in everyone’s mind: “What sort of man is this, whom even the winds and the sea obey?” The Jewish Scriptures, especially the Psalms, speak often of God ruling the sea and the waves. Now Jesus’ disciples have seen him act as only God acts.
          The story is Matthew’s gift to the Church, and to each of us who have become members of the Church in baptism. Time and again the Church, and we its members, are storm tossed. That we are frightened at such times is only natural. The story is the Lord’s assurance that he is always with us. No matter how often we have strayed from him, he remains close. He saves us for one reason alone: because he loves us. 

THEY BEGGED JESUS TO LEAVE.



Homily for July 2nd, 2014: Matthew 8:28-34.
          Jesus is in Gentile territory. We know that from the herd of pigs mentioned at the end of today’s gospel reading. Jews considered pigs unclean animals and did not raise them for food.
          The “demoniacs” who encounter Jesus are possessed by demons. This has made them violent and dangerous. “They were so savage that no one could travel by that road,” the gospel says, adding that when they met Jesus “they were coming from the tombs.” The idea of cemeteries being dangerous and scary places lives on today in stories about people whistling in the dark, to keep up their courage, as they walk by a cemetery. Here, as elsewhere in the gospels, the demons perceive something that ordinary people do not. They recognize who Jesus is: “Son of God.” Most of Jesus’ friends would discover his true identity only after the resurrection.
“Have you come here to torment us before the appointed time?” they ask. This question reflects the belief in those days that demons were permitted to torment humans until “the end time,” when God would come to earth in blazing glory. Unlike humans, the demons recognize that with the coming of Jesus, God’s kingdom was already breaking in – which was bad news, of course, for the demons and all forces of evil.
Aware of Jesus’ power, the demons plead with him: “If you drive us out, send us into the herd of swine.” Jesus does so, and the animals, now controlled by demonic forces, rush headlong into the nearby sea and drown.
When the men who had been looking after the pigs carry the news of what has happened to the nearby town, the inhabitants come out en masse and beg Jesus to leave. But of course! The loss of the pigs was a heavy blow to the local economy. What fresh disasters might occur if Jesus were to stay?   
          The story takes us into a world very different from ours. Or is it? Still today there are dangerous people who do horrible things: mass shootings at schools, kidnappings, slaughter by crazed suicide bombers. Despite all precautions by the military, police, and electronic surveillance, there is only One who has power over today’s demonic powers. His name is Jesus Christ.

Sunday, June 29, 2014

"THEY TRAMPLE THE HEADS OF THE WEAK."





Homily for June 30th, 2014: Amos 2-10, 13-16.
Should the Church get involved in politics? Many people say, ANo way. Religion and politics don=t mix.@ Others disagree. Whenever fundamental moral issues are at stake, these people maintain, the Church must get involved. Our first reading today introduces a religious figure who was severely condemned for involvement in politics. Like his countryman, Jesus, centuries later, Amos was a layman. God called Amos while he was still a shepherd and farmer, and commanded him: AGo, prophesy to my people Israel.@
Amos had no crystal ball to predict the future. Instead Amos, like all true 
prophets, was summoned to speak Aa word of the Lord@ to the people of his day: to warn, to admonish, to rebuke, and to encourage. As a simple countryman, Amos was scandalized by his glimpses of city life during his visits to market. “They sell the just man for silver, and the poor man for a pair of sandals. They trample the heads of the weak … and force the lowly out of the way.” Without mincing his words, Amos pronounced his society ripe for God=s judgment.
If Amos were to come back today, what are some of the things he would denounce in our society and tell us we needed to repent of? One which was often mentioned by Pope John Paul II, and by his two successors, is consumerism: the false idea that we can buy happiness by amassing more and more possessions.
Something else which cries out for repentance is hedonism: the mindless philosophy that says, AIf it feels good, do it.@ Hedonism wrecks lives, relationships, and marriages, every day. We need to repent also of the hard-hearted selfishness which ignores the needs of the poor and oppressed in our midst; or which thinks that our obligation to them can be discharged by gifts to charity from our surplus goods, with no examination of unjust conditions in society that cause poverty and oppression. 
We need to repent too of an over-spiritualized religion which is concerned only with saying prayers and getting into heaven; and which ignores the challenge which Jesus gave us in his model prayer: AYour will be done on earth as it is in heaven.@ Those words challenge us to build colonies of heaven here on earth C by living not just for ourselves, but for God and for others.
That is a short though incomplete list of the things in today’s society that require repentance. Jesus speaks of this often in the gospels. And the repentance to which he summons us is not somewhere else, tomorrow. It is here, and it is now. And repentance begins not with someone else. If it is to begin at all, repentance must begin with ourselves.