Friday, August 15, 2014

LET THE CHILDREN COME TO ME."



Homily for August 17th, 2014:  Matt. 19:13-15. 
The world in which Jesus lived was certainly not child centered. Children were supposed to keep out of the way: to be seen, perhaps, but not heard. That is why Jesus’ disciples thought they were doing him a favor by shooing children away from him.  
          Jesus surprises his disciples (he’s still surprising people) by saying: “Let the children come to me.” Then he adds something which he repeats, in one form or another, throughout the gospels: “The kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these” – in other words, to children. Elsewhere Jesus tells us that, to enter the kingdom of heaven, we must “become like little children” (cf. Mt. 18:2ff, Mk 9:36, Lk 9:47).
          What is it about childhood that Jesus recommends? First, an aspect of childhood which he certainly does not recommend: two little ones in the playpen fighting over a toy that interested neither until the other one picked it up. Even young children can be selfish. As we grow older we learn ways of hiding our selfishness. Children don’t know how to do that.
          One thing about children that Jesus does recommend is their natural sense of dependence. It never occurs to little ones that they can make it on their own. Few things are more devastating for a young child than to be separated from Mummy or Daddy.
          Another feature of childhood recommended by Jesus is the ability to wonder. Everyday things which we adults take for granted amaze little children: birds in the sky, flowers, balloons. Sadly, TV has robbed children of this quality. By age 3 at the latest, they have seen it all on the Boob Tube. Artists retain this capacity for wonder – and saints. A painter sees a piece of driftwood on the beach and gives it a place of honor in his studio at home. Bl. Teresa of Calcutta’s face was wreathed in smiles whenever she picked up a small child.
We pray, then, in this Mass: “Lord, give me always a sense of my dependence on you. Help me to gasp with wonder at the beauty of your creation!”  

Thursday, August 14, 2014

MARY, WOMAN OF FAITH.



Homily for August 15th, 2014: Luke 1:39-56.
Mary, the Second Vatican Council says, Ashines forth on earth, until the day of the Lord shall come, a sign of certain hope and comfort to the pilgrim People of God@ (LG 68). Our pilgrim way is beset with difficulties. We are reminded of them each time we read the morning headlines, or watch the news on television.
On this feast of Mary=s Assumption we are reminded that Mary also confronted difficulties on her own pilgrim way. What did Mary understand about the angel=s message that even before her marriage to Joseph she was to become the mother of God=s Son? She understood at least this: that in a tiny village where everyone knew everyone else and gossip was rife, she was to be an unmarried mother. Yet Mary responded without hesitation in trusting faith: AI am the servant of the Lord. Let it be done to me as you say@ (Lk 1:38) 
That act of trusting faith was not blind. Young as Mary was B and the Scripture scholars think she may have been only fifteen B she asked what any girl in her position would have asked: AHow can this be, since I do not know man?@ (Lk 1:34) Even this question, however, reflects faith. Mary was questioning not so much God and his ways as her own ability to understand God=s ways.
Nor was Mary=s faith a once-for-all thing. It needed to be constantly renewed. Before her Son=s birth, Joseph wanted to break their engagement. When the couple presented their newborn child to the Lord in the Jerusalem temple, Mary heard the aged Simeon prophesy the child=s rejection and his mother=s suffering (Lk 2:34f). Three decades later, after Jesus left home, he seemed on more than one occasion to be fulfilling his command to his disciples about turning one=s back on parents and other relatives (cf. Lk 14:26). At the marriage at Cana Jesus seemed to speak coldly to his mother. She seems not to have been present at the Last Supper. Only at Calvary was Mary permitted to stand beside her now dying Son, along with Athe disciple whom Jesus loved@ (John 19:26); deliberately unnamed, many Scripture scholars believe, to represent the ideal follower of Jesus Christ in every time and place.
The last glimpse we have of Mary in Scripture is immediately before Pentecost. With the apostles and Jesus= other relatives, she is praying for the descent of the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:14). Thereafter Mary disappears. Her work of bringing Christ to the world was taken over by the Church. 
How did Mary=s life end? We do not know. In defining Mary=s Assumption on All Saints Day 1950, Pope Pius XII said simply: AWhen the course of [Mary=s] earthly life had ended, she was taken up body and soul into the glory of heaven.@ The body the Pope referred to is Mary=s new resurrection body: the body with which Jesus rose from the dead B the heavenly and spiritual body which, as St. Paul says, each one of us will receive in heaven (cf.1 Cor. 15:35-53). There Mary continues to pray for us on our pilgrim way. As the Catechism says: AThe Church loves to pray in communion with the Virgin Mary ... and to entrust supplications and praises to her.@ (No. 2682).
For many Christians, however, and for almost all Protestants, Catholic teaching about Mary, and our devotion to her, are troubling. Especially troubling is the Catholic practice of praying to Mary. Surely, Protestants say, we can pray only to God. Strictly speaking, they are right. When we Catholics pray to Mary, or to any of the other saints, what we are really doing is asking them to pray for us and with us. The conclusion of the classic Marian prayer, the Hail Mary, makes this explicit: AHoly Mary, Mother of God, pray for us now and at the hour of our death.@
If it makes sense to ask our friends on earth to pray for us, doesn=t it also make sense to ask the prayers of our friends in heaven, the saints? The Catechism says it does: ABeing more closely united to Christ, those who dwell in heaven ... do not cease to intercede with the Father for us. ... We can and should ask them to intercede for us and for the whole world.@ (No. 956 & 2683) Without Mary=s prayers, I would not be a Catholic priest today. Let me tell you how I know this.
Before I was a Catholic priest I was an Anglican priest, like my father and grandfather before me. Leaving the church which had taken me from the baptismal font to the altar, and taught me almost all the Catholic truth I know, even today, was the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. Starting in 1959, and for almost a year, the question of the Church, and of my conscientious duty before God, was not out of my waking thoughts for two hours together.
One of the many obstacles to my decision was the need to abandon, possibly forever, the priesthood to which I had aspired from age twelve, and which had brought me great happiness, with no guarantee that it would ever be given back to me. In Holy Week 1960 a Trappist monk at St. Joseph=s Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts, himself a convert from Judaism, who was helping me along the last stretch of my spiritual journey, said to me: AWhy don=t you give your priesthood to Our Lady, asking her to keep it for you, and to give it back to you when the time is right?@ With his help I did this. 
Had I known then that it would be eight years before I could once again stand at the altar as a priest, I would never have had the courage to go through with it. During those years I had many difficulties B so many that well meaning priest-advisers told me I should forget any idea of priesthood and embrace a lay vocation. This I was never willing to do. I knew that Our Lady was keeping my priesthood for me, and I was confident that she would give it back to me one day. 
After eight years, on January 27th 1968, I knelt before the bishop of Münster in northern Germany, where I was then living, to receive the Church=s commission to stand at the altar once again, as a Catholic priest. I had never told the bishop about entrusting my priesthood to Our Lady. You can imagine my joy, therefore, when, at the end of the private ninety-five minute ceremony in his private chapel, the bishop turned to the altar and intoned the Church=s ancient Marian hymn: Salve regina, AHail, Holy Queen.@     

Wednesday, August 13, 2014

"I CANCELLED YOUR ENTIRE DEBT."



Homily for August 14th, 2014: Mathew 18:21-19:1
          “Lord, when my brother wrongs me,” Peter asks Jesus, “how often must I forgive him? Seven times?” “No,” Jesus replies, “not seven times; I say, seventy times seven times.” Jesus was saying that the duty of forgiveness was unlimited. Then, as so often, Jesus tells a story to illustrate his teaching.
          The story’s opening is ominous. A king, for Jesus’ hearers, was a man with power of life and death over his subjects. The people with whom he intends to settle accounts are officials responsible for collecting the king’s taxes. “One was brought in, who owed a huge amount.” A lifetime was insufficient to pay it. The king’s cruel punishment, ordering not only the man himself but his whole family to be sold into slavery, would have shocked Jesus’ hearers. Then comes a surprise. When the man pleads for time to pay the debt, the king suddenly shows mercy: “Moved with pity, the master…wrote off the debt.”
          No sooner delivered from his desperate plight, the official finds a colleague who owes him “a much smaller amount,” and demands immediate payment in full. The second official’s reaction to the demand that he pay his debt mirrors that of the first. “Just give me time and I will pay you back in full.” The sole difference is that the second official’s debt could easily be paid, given reasonable time. How shocking for those hearing the story for the first time to learn of the first official’s harsh response. Seizing his colleague by the throat and throttling him, he insists that the man be imprisoned until the debt is paid.
          In the story’s conclusion the colleagues of the two debtors go and report the injustice to the king. Summoning the first official again, the king reminds him of the unmerited mercy he has received and, in an act of grim irony, grants the man what, in his original desperation, he had requested: time. Now, however, the time will be spent not in repayment but in prison, under torture. This detail would have deeply shocked Jesus’ hearers. In Jewish law torture was unknown.
          Behind the king in the story stands God. The corrupt official’s hopeless plight parallels our own. From birth we owe God everything. He has given us all we have, sin excepted. Only a life of perfect obedience to God could discharge this debt. By disobedience, however, we have incurred further debts. Our debt to God is unpayable. Out of pity for our plight, God sent his Son to pay on our behalf a debt we could never discharge ourselves. As Paul writes: “He pardoned all our sins. He canceled the bond that stood against us with all its claims, snatching it up and nailing it to the cross” (Colossians 2:13f). This forgiveness is given to us, like all God’s gifts, under one strict condition: that what we have freely received, we freely share with others. The story’s lesson is simple: if we are not forgiving toward others, as God is already forgiving toward us, we risk discovering one day that the forgiveness God has extended to us has been canceled. Jesus is telling us, in short, that our treatment of others, here and now — and especially of those who have wronged us — is already determining where, how, and with whom we shall spend eternity. 

Tuesday, August 12, 2014

RULES FOR RECONCILIATION



Homily for August 13th, 2014: Matthew 18:15-20.
          In the gospel we heard Jesus giving instructions about how to handle disputes in the Christian community. They have existed from the beginning. Luke’s gospel tells us, for instance, and that even at the Last Supper they argued over “who should be regarded as the greatest” (22:24). The instructions Jesus gives owe much to existing rabbinical rules for the settlement of disputes, yet bear the imprint of Jesus’ compassion for human weakness. He outlines a three-fold procedure.
          Jesus’ first step is personal confrontation of the offender: “Tell him his fault between you and him alone.” "But, of course," we say. In fact, too often this is exactly what the offended party does not do. It is much easier to avoid direct confrontation in favor of telling everyone who will listen how badly the offender has behaved.
          I witnessed this years go when I worked in the office of the archdiocese as Vice Chancellor. We received many telephone calls complaining about things done by priests in parishes. Many of them were put through to me. “Have you talked to Father about this?” I would always ask. In almost all cases the answer was No. “Go and see him,” I would always advise the caller. “A letter or e-mail is too impersonal. Have a personal conversation.” That is Jesus’ advice: “If he listens to you, you have won over your bother.”  
          Only if that fails should you proceed to the second step, Jesus says. “Take one or two others along with you.” They will be able to testify to what was said and done. Only if this second step fails to achieve reconciliation, should you go public: “Tell the Church,” Jesus says, meaning the local Christian community. “If he refuses to listen even to the Church, then treat him as you would a Gentile or tax collector.” This final step – and it should always be saved for last– is what we today call excommunication.
At each stage there is opportunity for repentance and reconciliation. This is how God treats us, as Pope Francis tells us often when he says: “God never gets tired of forgiving. It is we who get tired of asking for forgiveness.”
          The gospel reading concludes with the wonderfully reassuring words: "Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”

Monday, August 11, 2014

THE LOST SHEEP



Homily for Aug. 12th, 2014: Matt. 18:1-5, 10, 12-14.
          “If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them goes astray, will he not leave the ninety-nine in the hills and go in search of the stray?” Jesus’ rhetorical question invites the answer, “Of course, any shepherd would do that.” In reality, no shepherd in his right mind would think for a moment of  doing what Jesus’ question suggests. That would risk turning a minor misfortune, the loss of a single sheep, into a major disaster: the dispersal and possible loss of the entire flock.
          ‘That’s how good God is,’ Jesus is saying with this simple parable. God’s care for us is not reasonable, measured, prudent. God’s love for us is reckless, according to ordinary worldly standards. When we stray from him, God will go to any lengths, and wait without limit, to get us back.
          But what about Jesus’ following words about the shepherd rejoicing more over the one lost sheep than over the ninety-nine who never strayed? Shouldn’t there be some rejoicing, at least, over those who never left the flock?
          To answer that question we must ask another. Who are these ninety-nine who never went astray? Do you know anyone like that? I don’t. Oh, I know many people who think they have never strayed from their heavenly Father’s love. But they are wrong. How can there be any rejoicing over people who are so mistaken about their spiritual condition?
          In reality all of us stray from our heavenly Father in some way and at some time. All of us need the Father’s loving forgiveness. With this short and simple parable, Jesus is telling us that God’s care, his love, and his forgiveness, are available to us always. Or as our wonderful Pope Francis never tires of telling us: God never gets tired of forgiving us. It is we who grow tired of asking for forgiveness.

Sunday, August 10, 2014

"THEY WERE OVERWHELMED WITH GRIEF."



Homily for August 11th: Matthew 17:22-27.
          “They were overwhelmed with grief,” we heard in today’s gospel. The words come toward the end of chapter 17 in Matthew’s gospel. The previous chapter records Peter’s confession, “You are the Messiah,” and Jesus’ response: “You are Peter/Rock, and on this rock I will build my Church.”  The following chapter 17 starts with an account of Jesus’ transfiguration. For a brief moment Peter and the brothers, James and John, see the Master whom they love, and who up to that point they have known as a man like themselves, as utterly unlike themselves. He shines with heavenly light and his friends hear a heavenly voice saying, “This is my beloved Son, on whom my favor rests. Listen to him.” This causes Jesus’ three friends to throw themselves on the ground, “overcome with fear.” The encounter with God in Holy Scripture is never routine or ordinary. Always there is a feeling of awe, which is a heightened kind of fear. To reassure them Jesus speaks words which he will repeat later: “Get up. Do not be afraid.”
          When they have come down from the mountain on which these things happened, the father of a young boy who is ill with what we would call epilepsy throws himself down before Jesus and begs him to heal his son. Jesus does so at once. Then come the words with which our gospel opened: “The Son of Man is to be handed over to men, and they will kill him, and he will be raised on the third day.” 
          “Raised on the third day” is beyond the understanding of Jesus’ friends. All they can comprehend is that the Master whom they love will be killed. They have been on what we would call an emotional roller-coaster. The descent from the heights they have been on is traumatic. No wonder that they are “overwhelmed with grief.” Jesus remains calm, however, and in command. In the following chapter 18 of Matthew’s gospel, he continues his ministry of teaching.
          Jesus is with us always, especially in times of panic and distress.