Friday, July 18, 2014

"A BRUISED REED HE WILL NOT BREAK."



Homily for Saturday July 19, 2014. Mt. 12:14-21.
          Jesus “warned them not to make him known.” Why? Jesus did not want celebrity status, based on his ability to heal people and perform the other miracles we read about in the gospels. Mostly Jesus worked quietly. The gospel reading we have just heard describes Jesus’ manner of work in language taken from the Prophet Isaiah.
          “He will not contend or cry out,” Isaiah writes. “A bruised reed he will not break, a smoldering wick he will not quench.” In his 2007 Encyclical on hope, Spe salvi, Pope Benedict XVI tells the story of a woman who was like Isaiah’s bruised reed and smoldering wick, Josephine Bakhita. Born in about 1869 to a wealthy family in the Sudan, she was kidnapped at age 9 and sold and re-sold in the slave market in Darfur. Beaten and flogged by her masters so often that she had 144 scars on her body, she came finally into the possession of the Italian consul in the Sudan. He took Josephine with him when he returned to Italy in 1885. There Josephine heard about a master who was unlike any other: not only just and kind, but one who actually loved her. He too had been flogged. He was waiting for her at the Father’s right hand.
          In January 1890 Josephine was baptized, and on the same day given Confirmation and First Communion by the Patriarch of Venice, later the Pope, St. Pius X. In 1893 she entered the Italian Canossian Sisters, with whom she lived until her death in 1947. Revered by all who knew her because of her gentleness, calming voice, and ever present smile, she was declared a saint by St. John Paul II in 2000.
Asked once, "What would you do, if you were to meet your captors?" Josephine responded: "If I were to meet those who kidnapped me, and even those who tortured me, I would kneel and kiss their hands. For, if these things had not happened, I would not have been a Christian and a religious Sister today.” Because the Church has declared her a saint, we can pray: “St. Josephine Bakhita, Pray for us.”  

Thursday, July 17, 2014

"I DESIRE MERCY, NOT SACRIFICE."



Homily for July 18th, 2014: Matthew 12:1-8.
          “Remember to keep holy the Sabbath day,” is the third of the Ten Commandments. We find the Commandments twice in the Old Testament: in the 20th chapter of Exodus, and in the 5th chapter of Deuteronomy. Both versions say that we keep the Sabbath holy by refraining from work. Exodus says that the Sabbath rest commemorates God resting on the seventh day after creating the world and everything in it in the previous six days. Deuteronomy doesn’t mention God resting; but it spells out in greater detail what Exodus says more briefly: that the Sabbath rest is for all, domestic animals as well as humans, masters and slaves alike: “for you were once slaves in Egypt.”
          By Jesus’ day the rabbis had developed a list of 39 kinds of work that were forbidden on the Sabbath. Harvesting crops and preparation of food were both on the list. So when the Pharisees, who were among Jesus’ most severe critics, saw his disciples picking off heads of grain as they walked through a wheat field on the way to the synagogue on a Sabbath day and eating the grain to satisfy their hunger, they pounced quickly. “That’s forbidden!” the Pharisees say.
          Jesus defends his disciples by citing an incident in the Old Testament regarding the bread offered to God in the Temple each Sabbath. After a week it was eaten by the priests and replaced with fresh bread. Others were forbidden to eat it. Yet once, when the great King David was hungry, he and his companions ate the bread themselves.
          Jesus never abrogated any of God’s laws. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus says that he came not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it (cf. Mt. 5:17). But he made charity the highest law of all. That is why he healed on the Sabbath, for instance. And that is why Pope Francis, celebrating the Mass of the Lord’s Supper in a prison on the first Holy Thursday after his election disregarded the liturgical law which says that only the feet of baptized men should be washed, in order to wash also the feet of some Muslim women. The highest law of all is charity.

Wednesday, July 16, 2014

A PURE CHURCH?

16th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A. Wis. 12:13, 16-19; Mt. 13:24-30.
AIM: To show the hearers that the Church is a Church of sinners, not a    
          gathering of the righteous.
      A number of you are gardeners. Why on earth, you are probably wondering, does the man in this story tell his workers not to pull up the weeds in his field? The story, like many passages in holy Scripture, makes us shake our heads and wonder how we can make sense of it all. Jesus tells us this story to show us that God’s ways are radically different from ours. The story is also Jesus’ answer to his self-righteous critics who complained: “This man receives sinners, and eats with them” (Lk 15:2). Why?
      The suggestion of the farmer’s slaves that they should pull up the weeds in his field was entirely reasonable. The farmer rejects the suggestion nonetheless. There will be a time for separating the weeds from the wheat, he says. But that is later, at the harvest. Until then, he orders, “let them grow together.” 
      ‘That is how I am acting,’ Jesus is saying. ‘That is how God acts — like this farmer.’ Jesus knew there were many people in the crowds which flocked to hear him who did not accept his message. Challenged by his critics to send such people away, however, Jesus refused. The time for separation and judgment, he said, was not yet. That would come later.
      The prophets of Jesus’ people, right up to and including John the Baptist, believed that when God sent his promised Messiah, the first thing this anointed servant of the Lord would do would be to judge people. Yet when Jesus came he did not judge. He ate with sinners. He prevented the stoning of the woman taken in adultery. He proclaimed God’s love for all – given freely and lavishly, whether people deserved God’s love (like the good Samaritan aiding the wounded man by the wayside), or whether they did not deserve it (like the younger brother in the parable of the Prodigal Son who came home, after wasting his entire inheritance, not with true sorrow for his sin, but simply to put food on his table and a roof over his head). Jesus healed people, without investigating first whether they repented of their sins or not.
      Jesus spoke of judgment too, of course. But he made it clear that this would come later. And it would be based on how people responded to God’s freely given love. In his great parable of judgment, the story of the sheep and the goats, Jesus said that the measure of our response to God’s love would be how much, or how little, we had done for people in need. 
      Jesus’ message – proclaiming God’s love first, and judgment later – and the story in today’s gospel of the wheat and the weeds which explains this message, are important for all those who are scandalized because his Church contains so many hypocrites: people who come to Mass on Sunday, but whose lives the rest of the week are inconsistent with the words they hear and speak in Church. There is no use trying to deny this. The Church does contain hypocrites. It always has. It always will. And it would be dishonest to pretend that they all laypeople.
      Jesus never promised that every baptized Catholic would be part of his heavenly kingdom, any more than he promised the crowds who flocked round him in Palestine that they would all be part of his kingdom. On the contrary, Jesus knows that his Church will always contain many who, because their hearts are far from God, are not part of his kingdom.
      Separating true believers from hypocrites, however, is for God not for us. “If you pull up the weeds, you might uproot the wheat with them,” Jesus warns. Every attempt to create a “pure” Church of true believers has ended in failure. Only God can purify his Church; for only God can see people’s hearts. If God chooses to delay his work of final judgment and purification, it is for the reason given in our first reading: God’s “mastery over all things” makes him “lenient to all.” God can afford to be generous and merciful because he is all powerful.
      The story tells us of God’s patience. It warns us not to be less patient than God. Which one of us would not like to have a Church in which there were no hypocrites? In which everyone from First Communion children to the Pope always practiced what they preached? That would be beautiful, wouldn’t it? But creating such a pure Church is God’s work, not ours. And the time for God’s final purification is not yet.
      Note that I said “final purification.” Purification of the Church through repentance and forgiveness of us, its members, goes on all the time, and must go on. The Second Vatican Council said that the Church is “always in need of being purified” (LG 8, end). The painful crisis which burst upon the Church in our country twelve years ago through the misconduct of some priests and bishops is part of this ongoing purification.  
      The time for final purification, however, is not yet. That “not yet” contains a warning, and a burden, but also encouragement. The warning is contained in the farmer’s order at harvest time: “First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles for burning.” God delays his judgment because he is patient, to give us every chance to decide for him while there is still time. One day, however, there will be no more chances. Judgment will begin. That is the warning. The burden is having to live in a Church of sinners, where many are hypocritical and insincere. The story’s encouragement is its message that the Lord’s Church has room for everyone. 
      I’d like to leave you with a question, for your own reflection: If the Church were really as pure as we would all like it to be, can we be confident that there would be room in this pure Church for ordinary, weak sinners like ourselves?

"TAKE MY YOKE UPON YOU . . ."



Homily for July 17th, 2014: Matthew 11:28-30.
          “Take my yoke upon you,” Jesus says. In Jesus’ day yokes were in daily use. Carved out of wood to fit over the shoulders, they had arms extending out about a foot or more on either side, with a ring on each end supporting a rope or chain from which the person using the yoke could hang a bucket or other container. This made it possible to transport with relative ease loads which could not be carried by hand.
          It was crucial that yoke fit the shoulders of the person using it. Otherwise the yoke would chafe and the person attempting to use it would soon throw it off. “My yoke is easy,” Jesus says, “and my burden light.” There is an unspoken IF there. The yoke and burden Jesus offers us are easy and light only if we accept them. If we chafe against the yoke and try to throw it off, then it is not easy; and the burden which it supports is heavy and definitely not light.
          To help us accept the yoke Jesus says: “Learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart.” Meekness and humility do not come to us easily or without prolonged effort and many failures. We must be lifelong learners. Our teacher is the best there is. He understands our difficulties. He is not interested in how often we stumble and fall. He is interested in one thing only: how often, with his help, we get up again, and continue the journey.
          Our teacher’s name is Jesus Christ. 

Tuesday, July 15, 2014

THINGS REVEALED TO THE CHILDLIKE



Homily for July 16th, 2014: Luke 10:21-24.
          Jesus breaks out in a spontaneous hymn of praise to his heavenly Father. “I give praise to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned, you have revealed them to the childlike.” The wise and learned are those who fail to respond to Jesus, because they feel no need for God. The childlike are Jesus’ disciples: their hearts and minds are open to the Lord.
          Who are the wise and learned today? They teach in our elite universities; they run the great foundations, with names like Ford, Rockefeller, and Gates. They dominate Hollywood and the media. With few exceptions they consider the killing of unborn children whose birth might be an inconvenience to be a wonderful advance in humanity’s ascent from ignorance and superstition to enlightenment and freedom. They charge those of us who consider abortion for any reason a crime and a grave sin with waging a “war on women.” If there is a war, it is not on women. It is a war on selfish, irresponsible men, who put the pursuit of personal pleasure at the center of their lives and take no responsibility for the consequences apart from offering the woman they have used a supposed cheap fix which will leave her with months, years, and in not a few cases decades of regret and guilt.
Today’s wise and learned look down with patronizing scorn, disbelief, and hatred on those who insist that life is precious at every stage: in the womb, but also in old age, when Grandma’s mind has gone ahead of her, and her meaningful life is over. When we contend that marriage is the union of one man and one woman; and that re-defining marriage is an injustice to children, who have a right to a father and a mother, they denounce us as bigots, homophobes, and enemies of equality.
          Who, on the other hand, are today’s childlike? We are! We pray in this Mass that our merciful and loving Lord may keep us always so: aware that God cannot be mocked; that when we violate his laws, we always pay a price; yes, and aware too that we can never make it on our own; that we are dependent every day, every hour, and every minute on the One who came to show us what the invisible God is like; who always walks with us on the journey of life; and who is waiting for each one of us at the end of the road – to welcome us home!

Monday, July 14, 2014

"THEY DID NOT REPENT."



Homily for July 15th, 2014: Matthew 11:20-24.
          A priest was waiting in line to have his car filled with gas just before a long holiday weekend. The attendant worked quickly, but there were many cars ahead of him at the service station. Finally, the attendant motioned him toward a vacant pump. "Sorry about the delay. Father,” the young man said. “It seems as if everyone waits until the last minute to get ready for a long trip.@ The priest chuckled, "I know what you mean. It's the same in my business."
          There’s name for that. We call it procrastination. This is what Jesus is talking about in the gospel reading we have just heard. Matthew starts by telling us: “Jesus began to reproach the towns where most of his mighty deeds had been done, since they had not repented.” We can assume that the mighty deeds Matthew refers to were his healing miracles, but also his powerful proclamation of God’s merciful love.
          Those powerful deeds called for a response. Jesus rebukes the people in the towns where he had preached and healed because there had been no response. “They had not repented,” Matthew says.  Repentance means “turning around:” forsaking evil and turning to good. The reaction to his mighty deeds had been no more than a complacent, “Oh, that’s interesting.” Jesus rebukes those who had refused to respond to him by reminding them of towns mentioned in the Old Testament which had been destroyed because of their refusal to repent of their evil ways and turn toward goodness. If only they had repented, they would be standing today, Jesus says.
          Procrastinating is so easy, and so common that probably all of us are guilty of it in some measure. “I’ll take care of that tomorrow,” we tell ourselves. Will we? We think we have time. One day, however, the time we’re counting on will end. Our time here on earth will be over, and God will call us home, to meet him face to face. What will that encounter be like? Will it be a joyful meeting with a familiar and dearly loved friend? Or will we be meeting a stranger, before whom we shrink in fear? Deciding what that encounter will be like is the most important decision we shall ever have.


         

Sunday, July 13, 2014

"BRING NO MORE WORTHLESS OFFERINGS."



Homily for July 14th, 2014: Isaiah 1:10-17; Matthew 10:34-11:1.
          Suppose, instead of the words we heard in our first reading, we were to hear instead: “Hear the word of the Lord: I have had enough of your Masses; your rosaries and novenas I detest. Your incense I loathe. Bring me no more worthless offerings.”
          The last sentence we did hear – about worthless offerings. The rest is merely the translation into modern Catholic terms, of what the prophet says to his people in that first reading. He is telling them: God is fed up with all your prayers and worship. Why? Because, Isaiah says at the end of that first reading, “Your hands are full of blood! Wash yourselves clean! Put away your misdeeds … cease doing evil; learn to do good. Make justice your aim; redress the wronged, head the orphan’s plea, defend the widow.” 
           Isaiah is talking about what is called today “social justice.” We find the same message in many of Israel’s prophets. Were they speaking today, they would tell us: It is no use saying all the right prayers, making novenas, and offering Masses for your intentions, and invoking the prayer of the saints, if your life is not in order. In today’s gospel reading Jesus tells us what this means. “Whoever loves father, or mother, or daughter or son more than me is not worthy of me. Whoever does not take up my cross and follow me is not worthy of me.” 
Lest that seem too difficult, Jesus promises to reward us when we are trying to love him completely and serve others generously. “Whoever gives only a cup of cold water to one of these little ones to drink because he is a disciple – amen, I say to you, he will surely not lose his reward.” And so we pray:
Teach us, good Lord, to serve you as you deserve;
to give and not to count the cost;
to fight, and not to heed the wounds
          to toil and not to ask for any reward, but that of knowing
          that we are doing your will.
         All this we ask through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen