Friday, July 25, 2014

"PUT NOT YOUR TRUST IN DECEITFUL WORDS."



Homily for July 26th, 2014: Jeremiah 7:1-11.
          Israel’s prophets were called by God to do two things. They were to comfort the afflicted. But they were also to afflict the comfortable. Afflicting the comfortable is what we hear Jeremiah doing in today’s first reading. In Jeremiah’s day many of his people had lulled themselves into a false sense of security, trusting in what Jeremiah calls “deceitful words.” They assumed that because God was dwelling in their midst, in the Temple at Jerusalem, they had a guarantee against all harm. Jeremiah told them this was a grave error. God’s protection, he warned, depended on faithfulness to God’s law, written on the stone tablets which God had given to Moses, and enshrined in the Temple in the ark of the covenant.
          Jeremiah represents God saying to the people: “Only if you thoroughly reform your ways and your deeds … will I remain with you in this place, in the land I gave to your fathers long ago.” This the people had not done. Like so many of the prophets, Jeremiah denounces the violations of what we call today “social justice.” God’s protection depends, he says, on each person dealing justly with his neighbor, no longer oppressing the resident alien, the orphan, and the widow.
          Jeremiah also denounces the people for direct violations of God’s law: theft, murder, adultery, perjury, idolatry. Do you suppose, Jeremiah asks them, that you can do these things and then stand before the Lord in his earthly dwelling and say: “We are safe; we can commit all these abominations again”?
          Is that all just long ago and far away? Of course not. The prayers we pray, the sacraments we celebrate and receive, must bear fruit in daily life. If not, those prayers and sacraments are not only defective. They cry to heaven for vengeance. The Lord’s concluding warning, at the end of the first reading, is addressed also to us: “I see what is being done,” says the Lord.

Thursday, July 24, 2014

SEEKING SERVICE, NOT HONOR.



Homily for July 25th, 2014: Matthew 20:20-28.
          “Whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant,” Jesus says in today’s gospel. It is his response to the request made by the mother of the brothers James and John that he give them places of special honor in his kingdom. The petition may have come from the mother. It is clear, however, that she had the full backing of her two sons. For when Jesus asks if they can share the chalice of pain and suffering from which he will drink, the two brothers respond eagerly, “We can.” They have no idea, of course, what lies ahead for the Master they love and revere.
It quickly becomes clear that the other disciples are equally clueless. They become indignant at James and John for staking out a claim before the other disciples can assert theirs. Patiently Jesus explains that this whole contest for honor is totally unacceptable among his followers. “Whoever wishes to be great among you shall be your servant; whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave.” And immediately Jesus ratifies this teaching with his own example: “The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
          We all need a measure of recognition and affirmation. But if finding that is central in your life, I’ll promise you one thing. You’ll never get enough -- and you'll always be frustrated. Look, rather, for opportunities to serve others and you will find happiness: here and now in this world -- and in the next the joy of eternal life with the Lord who tells us, later in this gospel according to Matthew: “Whatever you do for one of these least brothers or sisters of mine, you do for me.”  

Wednesday, July 23, 2014

"TO ANYONE WHO HAS, MORE WILL BE GIVEN."



Homily for July 24th, 2014: Matthew 13:10-17.
          “To anyone who has, more will be given, and he will grow rich; from anyone who has not, even what he has will be taken away.” Those words from today’s gospel reading  seem terribly unfair, don’t they. To understand what Jesus is saying, we must note first that he speaks in the passive: “more will be given;” and “what he has will be taken away.” As I have told you before, that is what Bible scholars call “the theological passive.” It is a way of saying the God will give more to anyone who has, without actually pronouncing the word “God,” which was forbidden to Jews; and that God will take away from anyone who has not.
          Even when we have understood this, however, we are still left with the seeming injustice. What Jesus is saying is this. Those who open themselves in faith and hope to Jesus’ message of God’s love and salvation quickly grow in understanding of the message. Those who close themselves to the message, demanding some “sign” – a dramatic proof which will compel them to believe – are unable to understand the message, and forfeit the offer of salvation.
          Teachers see something similar in the classroom all the time. Students who work hard, do their homework, and listen closely, grow rapidly in understanding. Those who are lazy, or think they know it all already, quickly fall behind and, over time, understand little or nothing. This is not a question of justice or injustice. It is simply the way things are.
          Jesus’ concluding words, “Blessed are your eyes, because they see, and your ears, because they hear,” are his grateful tribute to those who have opened the minds and hearts to him. Remembering that the word “blessed” also means “happy,” we pray:
          “Lord, if today we hear your voice, harden not our hearts.”

SURPRISED BY JOY



17th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A.  Matthew 13:44-52.
AIM: To show the joy of Christian discipleship.

          In the middle years of the last century there was no more widely read or more convincing spokesman for Christian belief than C.S. Lewis. A professor of English literature at both Oxford and Cambridge who died in 1963, his books still sell briskly today. In his only autobiographical work Lewis tells how he moved from the formal Protestantism of his childhood in Northern Ireland to abandon all religious belief in his teens. Only in his thirties did he come back to believe, first, in God, and then to accept Jesus Christ as God’s Son. He called the book Surprised by Joy – a tribute to the wife, Joy Gresham, whom Lewis, a confirmed bachelor most of his life, married in 1956 when he was fifty-eight. The 1993 film, Shadowlands, tells the story of their marriage.
          Both of the men in today’s gospel were “surprised by joy.” In this the man discovering buried treasure, and the merchant finding “a pearl of great price,” were alike. In other respects, however, the two men were quite different.
          The first man is a day laborer plowing his employer’s field. As he walks back and forth over the familiar ground, the plow catches on what he at first takes for a rock. Investigation shows it to be a pottery jar filled with gold and silver coins. Before the days of banks, the best way to guard such a treasure was to bury it. Who had buried it, or when, he cannot know. He realizes, however, that this unexpected find can change his life, giving him the first financial security he has ever known.
          He realizes also, however, that he has a problem. The law of the day said that buried treasure belonged to the person on whose property it was found.  Rather than carrying off the treasure at once, and risk having the owner of the field challenge his right to possess it, the man carefully buries the jar again and finishes his day’s work. Later he scrapes together his meager savings and makes his employer an offer for the field. He is careful to appear casual about it, so as not to arouse suspicion. When his offer is accepted, the man is overjoyed. The purchase has cost everything he has. The treasure which is now his, however, is worth far more.
          The merchant is different. He is not poor but well off. And he is looking for treasure. He probably started collecting semi-precious stones as a youngster. In time what began as a hobby became his livelihood. Years of buying and selling have sharpened his eye, and refined his taste. He smiles now when he thinks of the worthless baubles that used to please him years ago. One day, walking through the bazaar, he sees a pearl so large, and so flawless, that it takes his breath away. He knows he must have it. It will mean the sacrifice of all he owns. But no matter. When you have found perfection, no price is too high to pay.    
          “God’s kingdom is like that,” Jesus is saying. Neither of these two men thinks for a minute of the sacrifice he is making. Both think only of the joy of their new possession. Both know that the great treasure they have discovered is worth many times over what they are paying to possess it. 
          Must we pay a price to be faithful disciples of Jesus Christ? Of course.  Sometimes that price is high. But when we think only of the cost of discipleship, we make our religion grim and forbidding. In these two little parables Jesus is emphasizing not the cost, but the infinitely greater reward. From the great chorus of Christian disciples who, like the men in these two stories, have been “surprised by joy,” let me quote two voices.
          The first is the late fourth century north African convert, later a bishop, St. Augustine. All through his twenties the intellectually brilliant Augustine wanted to be a Christian. But he thought the price was too high. He was unable to give up his freedom to live his life as he pleased. After God granted him the grace of conversion, Augustine wrote that what he had sacrificed for Jesus Christ was nothing compared to the treasure he had gained.
          “How sweet did it become to me all at once to be without those trifles!” Augustine writes in his Confessions. “What I previously feared to lose, it was now a joy to be without. For you cast them away from me, you true and highest sweetness. You cast them out and instead entered in, you true and highest sweetness. You cast them out and instead entered in yourself, sweeter than all pleasure.” (Confessions ix.1)
          Then there is Fr. Alfred Delp, the German Jesuit who gave his life for Jesus Christ in 1945, under the tyranny of Adolf Hitler. In a farewell letter, written with manacled hands in his prison cell on death row but full of peace and joy, Fr. Delp wrote of his great discovery, and changed perspective. 
          “I know now that I have been as stupid and foolish as a child. How much strength and depth I have sacrificed in my life! How much fruitfulness I might have had in my work, how much blessing I might have given to others! Only the person who believes, who trusts, who loves, sees truly what human life is really all about. Only he can truly see God.”
          Let me conclude by recalling an event most of us can still remember: the tragic death of the British Princess Diana on the last day of August 1997. The story was brilliantly told a few years ago in the film The Queen. I saw it twice. For days television showed the public grief of crowds in London. Grief also fueled their protest that there was no flag at half mast over Buckingham Palace. Royal officials explained that the only flag permitted there was the Royal Standard, which is flown only when the sovereign is in residence. Since the Queen was in Scotland, the flagpole remained bare. Within days, however, tradition yielded to sentiment.  For the first time ever, the Union Jack flew over Buckingham Palace, and at half mast. 
          Why do I tell you that? Because we followers of Jesus Christ have a royal standard. On a field of red, the color of the Savior’s blood, the price of our redemption, is emblazoned in letters of gold the single word: “Joy.” It flies – or should fly – above the Christian heart, to show that the King is resident within.

Tuesday, July 22, 2014

"SOME SEED FELL ON RICH SOIL."



Homily for July 23rd, 2014: Matthew 13:1-9.
Most of the seed which the farmer sows is wasted. Only at the end of the story does Jesus tell us: “Some seed, finally, landed on rich soil and produced fruit a hundred or sixty or thirtyfold.”
          A Bible commentator writes: “A 20-to-1 ratio would have been considered an extraordinary harvest. Jesus’ strikingly large figures are intended to underscore the prodigious quality of God’s glorious kingdom still to come.”
          The parable is Jesus’ antidote to discouragement and despair. So much of our effort seems to be wasted. So much of the Church’s work seems barren of result. The Christian community for which Mark wrote his gospel was discouraged, as we are often discouraged.  They had been banished from the synagogue which they loved. They faced the same hostility as their Master.  Despite the rising hostility Jesus could see all round him, he refuses to yield to discouragement. He remains confident — and tells this story to give confidence to others. “Jesus is not only the sower who scatters the seed of God’s word,” Pope Benedict XVI writes. “He is also the seed that falls into the earth in order to die and so to bear fruit.” 
          Are you discouraged? You have made so many good resolutions. How many have you kept? You seem to make no progress in prayer. When you come to confession, it is the same tired old list of sins. You wanted so much. You’ve settled for so little. If that — or any of that — applies to you, then Jesus is speaking, through this parable, very personally to you. Listen.
          ‘Have patience and courage,’ he is saying. ‘Do your work, be faithful to prayer, to your daily duties. God has sown the seed of his word in your life. The harvest is certain. When it comes it will be greater than you can possibly imagine.  The harvest depends, in the final analysis, not on you, but on God. And God’s seed is always fruitful, his promise always reliable.’

Monday, July 21, 2014

"DO NOT CLING TO ME."



July 22nd, 2014: John 1-2, 11-18.
          Mary Magdalene “saw Jesus,” we heard in the gospel, “but did not know it was Jesus.” That was the experience of almost all those to whom Jesus appeared after his resurrection. Why? Jesus had not returned to his former life. He had been raised to a new life, beyond death. His appearance was somehow changed. Mary Magdalene realized it was the Lord standing before her only when he spoke her name. The gospel reading does not tell us how she reacted. We can easily infer this, however, from Jesus’ words:  “Do not cling to me!” Immediately followed by the command: “Go to my brothers with the news that [I am] risen.
          A young man thinking of priesthood told the priest who was helping him with his vocational decision that he had finally found courage to send in his application for admission to one of the Church’s religious orders for men. A few days after he received word of his acceptance into the novitiate, he was driving down the highway when he thought of a girl he had known. “She’d be the perfect wife for me,” he thought. “Am I crazy, throwing away that chance for happiness?” He got so upset that he prayed: “’Lord, you’re going to have to help me.’ Immediately, he said, “the Lord came to me so strongly that the tears ran down my cheeks, and I had to pull off the road.”
          “Johnny,” the priest told him, “the Lord came to you to strengthen your faith and your decision to serve Him as a priest. You must be thankful for that. But don’t try to hold on to that spiritual experience by running the video over again in your head. That is spiritual gluttony.”
          Then the priest told him about Mary Magdalene’s encounter with the risen Lord, and Jesus’ command to her: “Do not cling to me,” but go to my brothers with the news of my resurrection. Every encounter with the Lord is given to us not just for ourselves, the priest said, to give us a nice warm spiritual experience inside. The Lord comes to us to send us to others – his brothers and sisters; yes, and ours too.  

Sunday, July 20, 2014

"YOU HAVE BEEN TOLD, O MAN, WHAT IS GOOD."

Homily for July 21st, 2014: Micah 6:1-4, 6-8.
          “O my people, what have I done to you, or how have I wearied you? Answer me! For I brought you up from the land of Egypt, from the place of slavery I released you.” There is a deep poignancy about those questions in our first reading. Why do they sound familiar? We hear them in the liturgy for Holy Week and Good Friday. They represent God confronting his people, reminding them of all the love he has lavished on them, and asking why they have not responded.
          A representative of God’s people answers his plaintive questions with some questions of his own, asking what kind of response the Lord is looking for. “With what shall I come before the Lord? … Shall I come before him with burnt offerings? … Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with myriad streams of oil? Shall I give my first-born for my crime, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?” -- a reference to human sacrifice, practiced by some of Israel’s neighbors.
          Then comes God’s answer. “You have been told, O man, what is good, and what the Lord requires of you: Only to do right and to love goodness, and to walk humbly with your God.”
          How would all that sound today? If God were speaking to us modern Catholics, he would say something line this. ‘Why, my people, have you responded so poorly to all the love I have lavished on you? You think you must earn my forgiveness and love by piling up Masses, rosaries, and prayers to the saints? No! I am your loving, heavenly Father. You have my love and my forgiveness already. Your worship and prayers are your grateful response. But I’m looking for more: doing right in your dealings with others, loving the good in them – goodness which you often fail to see because you are so centered on yourself; and walking humbly with me, aware that without me you can do nothing good.’
          Is that a tall order? You bet it is. But never be discouraged. The Lord who looks for all this from us isn’t interested in how often we stumble and fall. He is interested in one thing only: how often, with his help, we pick ourselves up and continue journeying onward to him.