Friday, February 13, 2015

"I WAS AFRAID."


Homily for February 14th, 2015: Genesis 3:9-24.

          Have you ever felt so ashamed of yourself that you wanted to run away and hide? Today’s first reading is about a man who felt that way. After disobeying God’s command, Adam hides, hoping to avoid a confrontation with the loving Creator and Father against whom he has rebelled. 

          When God pursues him and asks, “Where are you?” the man replies: “I was afraid ... so I hid myself.” He thought he would find happiness by ‘doing his own thing.’ Instead he finds only disappointment, frustration, and shame. Is there anyone here who has never had a similar experience? This simple story is no primitive folk tale. It is the story of Everyman with a capital “E” – true to our common experience of life. If the story has a moral, it is this. We find happiness, joy, and peace only when we stop trying to run away and hide from God, and begin entrusting ourselves to him in faith. 

          “In faith” is crucial. It means trusting God. That does not come easily to us. Our  natural instinct is to trust ourselves. Most of the time we enjoy playing the leading role in what Fr. Robert Barron, widely recognized as the Bishop Fulton Sheen of our day, calls our “egodrama” – an apt term for the idea that life is really all about me, and I’m in charge, thank you.

          It takes most of us years, with many falls into disgrace and failure, to learn that life is not all about me. We begin really to live, and to enjoy happiness, fulfillment, and peace, only when we start to enter into what Fr. Barron calls the “theodrama” – God’s drama. He plays the leading role, he is in charge.  

          People who do that to a heroic decree are called saints. They surrender their lives to the One who made them, using their parents as his instruments: the Lord God. St. Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits), wrote what has become a classic prayer which expresses this surrender. I learned it at age 12. I have prayed it daily ever since. It goes like this:

“Take, O Lord, and receive my entire life: my liberty, my understanding, my memory, my will. All that I am and have you have given me. I give back to you all, to be disposed of according to your good pleasure. Give me only the comfort of your presence, and the joy of your love. With these I shall be more than rich, and shall desire nothing more.”

 

Thursday, February 12, 2015

"BE OPENED."


Homily for February 13th, 2015: Mark 7:31-37.
 ABe opened!@ Jesus says to the deaf man who is brought to him for healing. Deafness has closed him off from others. Jesus wants to set him free. Jesus is the man of total openness: openness to God; and openness to those whom society in Jesus= day accepted only in subordinate roles or not at all B women, children, and social outcasts like prostitutes and the hated tax collectors. Our fourth Eucharistic prayer tells us that Jesus proclaimed “the good news of salvation to the poor, to prisoners freedom, and to the sorrowful of heart, joy.”
Jesus is saying to us right now, in this church, what he said to the deaf man: ABe opened!@ How closed in we are much of the time: closed to God, closed to others. We shut ourselves up in prisons of our own making, whose walls are self-fulfillment, and whose guiding principle is the hackneyed and deceitful slogan: "Do your own thing." Most of the conflicts, divisions, and wars in our world -- between individuals, families, classes, groups, and nations -- are the result of people not being open. In the cacophony of conflicting arguments and claims we hear only what we want to hear, and no more; just enough to confirm our prejudices; and then we stop listening altogether. 
Even between Christians there are barriers erected by our failure to be open to each other. To remedy this tragic situation, which contradicts Jesus= prayer the night before he died, that all might be one (Jn. 17, passim), the Second Vatican Council recommended the method of dialogue. Dialogue requires that we be open to what those who are separated from us are saying; that we listen before we speak.
Can dialogue overcome all barriers? Sadly it cannot. Some conflicts are so grave that no human power seems great enough to break down the walls that separate us from one another. Nor can we penetrate by our own efforts alone the wall which our sins erect between us and the all-holy God. The gospel proclaims the good news that there is One who can break down those walls. His name is Jesus Christ.
Jesus, the man of total openness, has the right, if ever a man had it, to command: "Be opened!" he won that right for all time on Calvary when, as we shall hear in a moment in the preface to our Eucharistic prayer, "he stretched out his hands as he endured his Passion, so as to break the bonds of death and manifest the resurrection.” (Weekday Preface VI) 

Wednesday, February 11, 2015

HEALED, RESTORED, FORGIVEN


Homily for the 6th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B.  Leviticus 13:1-2, 44-46; Mark 1:40-45.
AIM: To bring home to the hearers the healing power of God’s unconditioned love.
                                                                   
          Have you ever been shunned by someone you love? It happens between friends, between lovers, between husbands and wives. They quarrel, and afterwards avoid each other’s company, or refuse to speak when they must be together. Many of us have been through experiences like that. It hurts terribly.
          The leper who comes to Jesus in today’s gospel was shunned by everyone except his fellow lepers. Leprosy was the dread scourge of the ancient world, something like AIDS today. Because leprosy was thought to be highly contagious, the leper had to live apart, in a kind of permanent quarantine. And since there was no cure for his illness, his situation was hopeless.
          The leper in today’s gospel, however, has heard about a man named Jesus who can cure people, even those with incurable diseases like leprosy. With a hope born of despair this man dares to violate the law for lepers which we heard about in our first reading: “He shall dwell apart, making his home outside the camp.”  The leper throws himself at Jesus’ feet and begs for healing: “If you wish, you can make me clean.”
          Notice how Jesus reacts. He does not show revulsion. He is not afraid he will be infected. Jesus, Mark tells us, is “moved with pity.” Though everyone else shuns the man, Jesus does not. Though the man’s situation is hopeless, for Jesus it is not. Though everyone else flees from the man in horror, Jesus does not. Instead Jesus does the unthinkable. He reaches out to touch the man. At Jesus’ command the man is cured. In a single moment his life is changed. He is restored to his friends and to society. He can lead a normal life again.
          This simple story, set in a world so different from ours, has good news for us. It tells us that Jesus is the friend of the outcast, that he rejects no one who comes to him. Now, as then, Jesus’ touch gives hope where previously there was no hope; restores people to fellowship with one another, and with God. 
          When we were little, our parents (if they were reasonably good parents) punished us when we were bad and rewarded us when we were good. We grew up expecting God to do the same. So if we want God to reward and bless us, we assume, we must first do something to deserve his blessing. Yet if we are honest, we must admit that much of the time we are not deserving. Repeatedly we have forfeited any claim we might have on God for his blessing and reward. The logical conclusion is that our situation is hopeless – as hopeless as the leper’s situation before he encountered Jesus Christ.
          The good news of the gospel is that our situation is not hopeless. God loves us as we are, right now. He does not love us because we are good enough, for much of the time we are not. God loves us because He is so good that he wants to share his love and his goodness with us.
          For this good news to bear fruit in our lives, however, we must do what the man in today’s gospel did. We must recognize the hopelessness of our situation and come to Jesus for healing. The leper needed no reminder of his hopelessness.  The society which segregated and shunned him reminded him of it at every moment.
          Many people, however, have difficulty recognizing the things in their lives that cry out for Jesus’ healing touch, for forgiveness. They have worn masks for so long that they can no longer see the real self behind the mask. If you are completely satisfied with your life as it is – with your character, your attitude, your achievements – then the good news of the gospel is not for you. Jesus cannot reach you with his healing power.
          If, on the other hand, you are willing to come to Jesus Christ, as the leper did; if you will tell him how desperately you need him – then you too can experience his healing, and his forgiveness. You have only to come. Jesus is waiting for you.
          As a sign that the leper, having been healed, was restored to the fellowship of God’s holy people and could join in their worship, Jesus sends him to the priest. Jewish priests in the Jerusalem Temple were also quarantine officers in Jesus’ world, as we heard in our first reading. Those whom Jesus heals and forgives today he sends to their sisters and brothers to share with them the divine gifts of healing and forgiveness. How terrible to experience Jesus’ healing and forgiveness and then to be, with others, hard-hearted, unforgiving: a tale bearer, a gossip, tearing people down instead of building them up; a person who opens wounds instead of closing them, who destroys hope instead of sharing it.
          The message of today’s gospel is simple. It is this. Jesus Christ gives hope where there is no hope. Jesus Christ cures the incurable and forgives the unforgivable. Jesus Christ welcomes outcasts and restores them to fellowship with God, and with God’s holy people. Jesus Christ changes lives.
          Jesus Christ can change your life. You have only to admit your need – and come.

"THE DEMON HAS GONE . . ."


Homily for February 12th, 2015: Mark 7:24-30.

          I told you yesterday that there are many things in the Bible that we do not understand. Yesterday we heard Jesus overthrowing the distinction in Jewish law between clean and unclean foods. Why then was there the great controversy, perhaps less than a decade later and reported in the Acts of the Apostles and three of Paul’s letters, over whether Gentile converts to Christianity must keep the Jewish food laws? We simply don’t know.          

          Today’s gospel poses another question which we cannot answer. Why did Jesus initially refuse the request of a Gentile woman that he heal her daughter? It cannot be because Jesus lacked compassion. The gospels show that he was a man of total compassion. Did Jesus want to test the depth of this mother’s love for her sick child? If so, she passed the test with flying colors. Throwing herself at Jesus’ feet, she shows that she is out to win. Her daughter means everything to her. She refuses to take no for an answer.

Jesus’ words about the children being fed first seem to be a reference to his mission of feeding his own people first. When Jesus says it is not right to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs, he is using traditional Jewish language. Jews in his day often referred to Gentiles as dogs. Jesus softens the word, however. The word he uses means not dogs but  puppies. Even this does not discourage the woman. Without missing a beat she comes right back with the remark: “Lord, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s scraps.” To understand what she is saying, we must know the eating habits of the day. Food was eaten with the fingers, which were wiped afterwards with pieces of flat bread that were then cast aside to be eaten by the household dogs.

          Or was Jesus testing the woman’s faith? If so, she passed that test too. For Jesus responds: “For saying this, you may go. The demon has gone out of your daughter.” Illness of all kinds was thought in Jesus’ day to be caused by demons.

          The beautiful conclusion of this moving story follows at once. “When the woman went home, she found the child lying in bed and the demon gone.”

          This desperate and nameless woman is a model of love and faith. We pray in this Mass that the Lord may give us faith like hers..

 

 

                             

Tuesday, February 10, 2015

WARNING . . . AND ENCOURAGEMENT


Week 1 Monday: Matthew 25:31-46.

          Often overlooked in this familiar parable is the surprise of both groups at the judgment pronounced upon them. Those whom the king commends are not aware of having done anything special. Those he condemns are indignant. As far as they know, they have observed all the rules. And now they find themselves rejected for things they never knew were in the rule book.

          What a lesson there is there for us Catholics. The parable is a warning. It tells us that everything we do in life, as well as the things we leave undone, have eternal consequences. The choices we make each day and hour are determining, even now, our final destiny. Judgment is not a matter of adding up the pluses and minuses in some heavenly account book. Judgment is simply God’s confirmation of the choices, or judgment, we have already made by the way we chose to live our lives. That is the warning.

          The parable’s encouragement is the assurance that we need not fear judgment, as long as  we are trying to help people in need whom we encounter along life’s way. It is not that our good deeds gain us a row of gold stars in some heavenly account book which help balance out the black marks. Jesus is saying something quite different. He is telling us that the person who is genuinely trying to serve others’ needs will not fail to attain moral goodness in other areas as well. And such failures as remain (and we all have them) will be forgiven by God.  

          Do you come here discouraged? Your life is a tangle of loose ends, failed resolutions, and broken promises? You pray poorly, you lose your temper, you’re impatient, you are unable to overcome some bad habit or, as they say, to “get it all together.” Take heart! If that, or any of that, is your story, then the parable of the sheep and the goats is Jesus’ encouragement for you. It is his way of telling you that your failures are not ultimately important, if you are looking for opportunities of helping others, and using those opportunities when you find them. Anything good you try to do for others, no matter how insignificant, is of infinite worth. It is done for Jesus Christ. One day you will discover, to your astonishment, that you have been serving Him all along, without ever realizing it. You will hear the voice of your shepherd-king saying to you tenderly, and very personally: “Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.”

          That, friends, is the gospel. That is the good news.

EVIL COMES FROM WITHIN


Homily for February 11th, 2015: Mark 7:14-23.

          “Everything that goes into a person from outside cannot defile,” Jesus says, since it enters not into the heart but the stomach.” The heart in Jewish thought was considered the seat of feelings and learning. The gospel writer Mark adds his own summary of what Jesus has just said: “Thus he declared all foods clean.”

Jesus’ disciples were all Jews. For them there was a whole list of foods which not be eaten because they were unclean, starting with pork. By declaring all foods clean Jesus was making a radical break with Jewish tradition. But this raises a problem. If Jesus so clearly abolished the distinction between clean and unclean foods, why was there the great debate, reported in the Acts of the Apostles and three of Paul’s letters, about whether Gentile Christians were bound by the Jewish food laws? The answer to that question is simply: we do not know. There are many things in the Bible that we cannot understand. 

What we can understand is the list of vices that Jesus gives us: evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, folly. Evil thoughts may be of many kinds: hatred, anger, lust, resentment. The list goes on and on. All of us have such thoughts from time to time. As long as we are trying to turn away from such dark thoughts to better ones, evil thoughts remain only temptations. And a thousand temptations do not make a single sin. Indeed Jesus himself was tempted after his 40 days of fasting in the wilderness. Yet we know that Jesus never sinned.

Theft is forbidden by the Commandment, “Thou shalt not steal.” Wouldn’t it be wonderful to live in a world where there was no theft? We wouldn’t need to lock our homes or cars. If we left something behind, we’d know it would be there when we came back. Could there be a better example of the Commandments being signposts to human happiness, not fences to hem us in? Envy is the one vice that brings its own punishment with it. When we give way to envy, we’re unhappy. Blasphemy is not respecting the holy name of God. Arrogance puts people off: no one likes an arrogant person. And folly means misusing or wasting the gifts God showers upon us.

Jesus, who gives us this list of vices, has also given us the best defense against them: the closing words of the one prayer he has given us, “Deliver us from evil.”

 

 

Monday, February 9, 2015

"GOD SAW HOW GOOD IT WAS"


Homily for February 10, 2015: Genesis 1:20-2:4a.

          Since Monday of this week we have been hearing readings from the first creation tale in Genesis, chapter one. The Bible comes to us from a pre-scientific age. Yet the two somewhat different creation tales in Genesis 1 and 2 contain important truth about the origin of our world.  

A striking feature of the first tale, in Genesis 1, is the repetition after each stage of creation of the phrase, almost like a refrain: “God saw how good it was.” This tells us that everything that comes from the hand of God is good. The evil in the world comes not from God, but through human sin. Today’s first reading concludes the creation tale with the words: “God looked at everything he had made, and he found it very good.”

          The first thing that God looks at in the Bible and says, “It is not good,” is loneliness: “It is not good for the man to be alone,” we read in chapter 2 of Genesis. In chapter one man and woman are created together, as we heard in today’s first reading: “God created man in his own image … male and female he created them.”
          Chapter two tells a different story. “The Lord God formed man out of the clay of the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and so man became a living thing.” The creation of woman follows: formed, we read in chapter two, out of one of the man’s ribs. That detail is pre-scientific, of course. But it expresses an important truth nonetheless. Man and woman were not made for rivalry: domination on the one hand, manipulation on the other. They were made for partnership – to complete one another. That is why the second creation tale from Genesis 2 is often used at weddings.

Yet not everyone is called to marriage. There are people who do not find a spouse. And spouses die, leaving the surviving partner alone. And then there are those whom God calls to religious sisterhood, or to priesthood. Are all these people condemned to a life of loneliness, called by God himself “not good”? That is what many people assume. They are wrong.

The cure for loneliness is not marriage – for married people too are sometimes lonely. Loneliness comes about because even in the perfect marriage or the ideal friendship (and how many people have found either?) the deepest desires of our hearts remain unfulfilled. There is only One who can fulfill those desires, the One who is love: God himself. We come here day by day to receive his love; and so that we may share that love with others. No one has said it better than St. Augustine, writing out of his own experience: “You have made us for yourself, O God; and our hearts are restless, until we find rest in you.”

Sunday, February 8, 2015

"AS MANY AS TOUCHED IT WERE HEALED."


Homily for February 9th, 2015: Mark 6:53-56.

          For a couple of hours, perhaps, during the voyage across the lake, Jesus has privacy. No one will bother him. Then, as soon as they reach the farther shore, the old routine resumes. “As they were leaving the boat, people immediately recognized him,” Mark tells us. “They scurried about the surrounding country and began to bring the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was” – another normal day for Jesus.

I still remember seeing on television back in 1964, pictures of Pope Paul VI in Jerusalem. As he tried to walk through the narrow streets of old Jerusalem, lined by shops and crowds of people on both sides, the Pope was constantly jostled by the crowds. And I remember thinking: ‘That’s what Jesus’ life was like; constantly hemmed in by people wanting to speak to him, to touch him.’ That is why we read often in the gospels about Jesus withdrawing to what the gospel writers call “deserted places.” He needed to escape the constant pressure, to be alone with his heavenly Father, from whom all Jesus’ power came, and all his love.  

In today’s gospel Mark tells us that wherever Jesus came “they laid the sick in the marketplaces and begged him that they might touch only the tassel of his cloak; and as many as touched it were healed.”

Jesus is still healing people. He cures us of physical ailments, but of spiritual ones as well: bad habits, pride, lack of love, jealousy, envy, hard-heartedness, impurity, resentment and hate. One of his titles is the Good Physician.

There is a little prayer, only five words, which I learned decades ago and which I repeat often as I go through the day. “Good Physician, make me whole.” Take that prayer and use it as you go through this day. Repeat the words over and over. They will take you straight to the heart of the One who loves you beyond your imagining; whose love will never let you go.

“Good Physician, Make me whole.”