Friday, May 29, 2015

"BY WHAT AUTHORITY DO YOU DO THESE THINGS?"


Homily for May 30th, 2015: Mark 11:27-33.

          In Jesus’ day, and still in rabbinical schools today, it was common to settle disputed matters by asking one another questions. That is what is going on in the gospel reading we have just heard. “By what authority are you doing these things,” the religious authorities at Jerusalem ask Jesus. They want to know who had given Jesus the authority to cleanse the Temple, as Jesus has just done. Jesus responds with a counter-question: “Who gave John the Baptist the authority to baptize?”

          His critics recognize at once that whatever they answer, they will be in trouble. If they say that John preached and baptized by God’s authority, Jesus will ask them why they did not believe John. If the critics say that John the Baptist’s authority came from himself only, they will incriminate themselves with the people, who regarded John as a prophet sent by God. The critics take the safe way out by saying simply: “We do not know.” To which Jesus responds: “Neither shall I tell you by what authority I do these things.”

          What does this tell us? It tells us that we cannot demand from God explanations which make sense to us of things we do not understand -- injustice and suffering, for instance. The Old Testament book of Job is about a man who demanded this of God. Job is an upright and good man who suffers a series of major calamities. Why has all this happened to me? he asks God. Job receives no answer – until finally God appears and asks a series of questions which Job cannot answer. Where were you, Job, when I made, the sea, the land, the stars of heaven; the birds, the beasts, and man himself? The point of these rhetorical questions is to make Job understand that there is no equality between man and God. The book ends with Job accepting that he, a mere man, cannot demand answers of God. “I have dealt with great things that I do not understand,” Job confesses. “I had heard of you by word of mouth. But now my eye has seen you. Therefore I disown what I have said, and repent in dust and ashes.” (22:2-6).

          Jesus never promised that all would go well with us, or that we would understand when it does not. He promises one thing only: to be with us in good times and bad; and when we encounter suffering and injustice to give us not understanding, but the strength to go on.

Thursday, May 28, 2015

INSTRUCTION ON PRAYER


Homily for May 29th, 2015: Mark 11:11-16.

          “My house will be called a house of prayer for all peoples,” we heard Jesus saying in the gospel reading. “But you have made it a den of thieves.” He took second phrase  from the prophet Exekiel, (7:11) who uses the uses the words to remind people that worship and prayer can never be a form of barter with God: ‘I’m giving you this, Lord, so you will give me that.’ God is generous with his gifts – far more generous than we are. But we cannot put God under obligation. He gives his gifts in sovereign freedom.      

          Jesus gives this teaching in connection with his cleansing of the Temple at Jerusalem, for Jesus’ people the earthly dwelling place of God. Mark tells us that Jesus “did not permit anyone to carry anything through the Temple area.” The Bible commentators concede that the meaning of this sentence is unclear. They suggest, however, that Jesus may have issued this prohibition to remind people that the Temple area was set apart for God, holy. They must not use it as a shortcut as they went about their daily errands. For us the words are a reminder that church buildings are holy. Our conduct in church must always reflect reverence for the God who dwells here, especially in his consecrated body and blood in the tabernacle.

          Jesus goes on to give an instruction on prayer. If we want the Lord to hear and fulfill our petitions, we must pray with faith. “All that you ask for in prayer,” Jesus says, “believe that you will receive it and it shall be yours.” He adds another requirement: “When you stand to pray, forgive anyone against whom you have a grievance, so that your heavenly Father may in turn forgive you your transgressions.” The words are an echo of others which we pray daily, in the one prayer that Jesus has given us: “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

          Just days after his election over two years ago Pope Francis reminded us of something he has repeated often since in various forms: God never grows tired of forgiving us. It is we who grow tired of asking for forgiveness.

Wednesday, May 27, 2015

THE THREEFOLD EXPERIENCE OF GOD

Trinity Sunday, Year B. Deut. 4:32-34, 39-40; Rom. 8:14-17; Mt 28:16-20.
AIM: To elucidate the mystery of the Trinity through our experience of prayer. 
Out of a thousand people selected at random, how many of them pray?  Surveys show that the number is far higher than those who attend church. There are probably few people who have never prayed, at some time in their lives. Prayer is as natural as eating or sleeping, and almost as universal.
A few years ago I made my annual retreat in a Trappist monastery south of Rochester, New York. You might be surprised at all the different people who find there way to a place like that. The Guestmaster, Fr. Jerome, has seen them all: drug addicts, alcoholics, Baptist ministers B yes, and atheists. AI tell my atheist friends,@ Fr. Jerome says, AYou=re in for a big surprise when you die. God will say to you: AI=ve been waiting for you, honey.@
During World War II, which I experienced as a teenager, there was a saying: AThere are no atheists in the foxholes.@ When the bullets are flying, and mortars exploding, even your atheist will pray.  
But what are we really doing when we pray? At the simplest level we could say that we are trying to get in touch with God. Before we start, however, we already have some concept of God. This is different for different people. For Christians, the primary source for our image of God is Jesus, the man who is God: completely human, as we are; yet also completely divine. Moreover, prayer doesn=t really start with us at all. We could not even begin to pray if God had not already implanted in us the desire to reach out to him, and if he did not assist us as we try to do so.
The simple act of praying has a three-fold pattern. First, God is the one we are trying to reach out to when we pray. Second, we already have some idea or image of God before we pray; and for Christians this is Jesus Christ. And third, it is God himself who gives us the desire to pray, and helps us as we do so.
We find a similar three-fold pattern in today=s first reading. Moses speaks there first of God=s work in creation: AAsk now of the days of old ... ever since God created man upon earth.@ Second, this creator-God is no remote AGreat Architect of the Universe,@ uninvolved in his handiwork. From all the nations of the earth, Moses says, God chose one people to be especially his own. He delivered this people from slavery in Egypt Awith strong hand and outstretched arm.@ And Aspeaking from the midst of fire,@ God gave the people Ahis statutes and commandments.@ Third and finally, Moses tells the people that this God, who was the people=s deliverer and lawgiver, looks for a response from his people, Athat you and your children may prosper, and that you may have a long life on the land which the Lord, your God, is giving you forever.@
In our second reading Paul calls this response Aa Spirit of adoption.@ He explains this as the ability to address the God who is both creator and deliverer as Father. The word Paul uses, AAbba@, was in his language the intimate word for father, something like our word, ADaddy@. The ability to address God in that way, Paul says, is not something we can attain of ourselves. It is God=s gift. AYou received a Spirit of adoption, through whom we cry, >Abba, Father!=@
Paul=s words reflect the same three-fold pattern we saw in our first reading.  First, we see God as creator of all that is. Second, this creator-God chooses one people for his own, and becomes their deliverer and lawgiver. Third, he himself enables them to respond to creation and deliverance with the obedient love of children, expressed in the intimate form of address: AAbba, Father.@
This three-fold pattern becomes explicit in Jesus= parting command to his apostles in today=s gospel. AGo, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.@ Jesus= words tell us that the God who is one is also three. This is the doctrine of the Trinity. The Catechism calls the Trinity Athe central mystery of Christian faith and life ... the mystery of God in himself@ (No. 234).
When the Catechism says that the doctrine of the Trinity a mystery, this does not mean that it can be understood only by learned experts. True, those experts have written countless books about the Trinity. But the simplest believer without any formal education can still experience what those books are trying to say simply by turning to God in prayer. Even children have the three-fold experience of God with which we began. 
Imagine a young girl kneeling by her bed at night. Before she starts to pray, God is. Second, the child has some idea of this God before she kneels down. This is based on what she knows of Jesus Christ. And third, the One who inspires the child to pray, and helps her to do so, is God himself. The child is experiencing Father, Son, and Holy Spirit even though she may never have heard those terms or be too young to understand them.
When we read that the doctrine of the Trinity is a mystery, that does not mean that only learned experts can understand it. It means that all anyone can know of God C learned theologian or simple believer C is only a tiny part of the full reality of God. The language of the world=s greatest poets, and the ideas of the Church=s most learned philosophers and theologians, can never capture the richness, the depth, or the majesty of God. We come closest to penetrating the mystery of God not through study and learning, but through love: not just a warm feeling, but an attitude of the will that takes us out of ourselves and impels us to active service of God and others.   

The anonymous author of the classic medieval work on prayer, The Cloud of Unknowing, has said it best: ABy love God may be caught and held; by thinking never.@ To which we may add the beautiful words of St. Jean Vianney, the curé or parish priest of Ars in France in the first part of the nineteenth century; no theologian, but a man on fire with the love of God. 

AIn the heart that loves God,@ Jean Vianney said, Ait is always springtime.@

"GET UP, JESUS IS CALLING YOU."


Homily for May 28th, 2015: Mark 10:46-52.
Blind Bartimaeus, a name which means “Son of Timaeus,” supports himself through begging. When he hears that the famous rabbi, Jesus from Nazareth, is coming to town, he knows there will be a big turnout. With any luck he=ll have a good day. From his appointed station Bartimaeus hears the sound of an approaching crowd. At once Bartimaeus starts to cry out the flattering salutation which he has rehearsed in advance: AJesus, son of David, have pity on me!@ Indignant that this squalid town beggar should disturb the famous rabbi=s pilgrimage, the bystanders tell Bartimaeus to be quiet. He pays no attention. This is his big chance.  He continues to cry out at the top of his voice.
Though Bartimaeus cannot see it, Jesus has stopped. He is telling his friends to summon the man whose voice Jesus can still hear through the hubbub of the crowd. ATake courage,@ those near Bartimaeus tell him. AGet up, Jesus is calling you.@ Overjoyed, Bartimaeus leaps to his feet, throwing aside the tattered cloak which he uses to enhance the impression of pathetic misery.

AWhat do you want me to do for you?@ Jesus asks. Bartimaeus never expected anything like this. AMaster,@ he hears himself saying, AI want to see.@ AImmediately he received his sight,@ Mark tells us. The words which follow are the most important in the whole story: Bartimaeus Afollowed [Jesus] on the way.@ Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem. To follow Jesus on that way means that Bartimaeus has become Jesus= disciple. The fact that this man, alone of all those Jesus healed in this gospel, is named, indicates that he was known to the Christian community for which Mark wrote. He was one of them.

AGet up, Jesus is calling you!@ Was that just long ago and far away? Don=t you believe it! That is the Lord=s message to you, right now. Have you responded to the message? Are you passing on the message to others? If not, what are you passing on? Whether you know it or not, your life is making a statement. Is it a statement for Jesus Christ? or against him?

Perhaps you are uncertain what statement your life is making. Then you need to listen again to the call. Jesus is calling you. The farther you are from him, the more urgently he is calling. You need to do what Bartimaeus did: get up, cast aside the things that hinder you, and come to Jesus. He wants to heal you of your inner, spiritual blindness.

He wants you to follow him, on the way.     

Tuesday, May 26, 2015

'WHOEVER WISHES TO BE GREAT AMONG YOU WILL BE YOUR SERVANT."


Homily for May 27th, 2015: Mark 10:32-45.

ATeacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you,@ the brothers James and John say to Jesus. When he asks what that is, they respond: AGrant that in your glory we may sit one at your right hand and the other on your left.@ Despite their presumption, Jesus does not rebuke them. Instead he asks:  ACan you drink of the cup that I drink or be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?@ AWe can,@ the brothers reply lightheartedly. 

The cup Jesus refers to will be, this time, not in water but in blood. Patiently Jesus explains that this whole contest for power and honor is totally unacceptable among his followers. AWhoever wishes to be great among you will be your servant; whoever wishes to be first among you will be the slave of all.@ Jesus reinforces this teaching with his own example: AFor the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.@ The first citizens of God=s kingdom are those who, like Jesus himself, seek not to be served, but to serve.

The quest for recognition and honor continues in the Church today. It has given rise to the saying in Rome: “If it rained miters, not one would touch the ground.” Recognition and honor are not bad in themselves. We all need them to some degree, to prevent becoming discouraged. They become evil only when the quest for them takes over and becomes central in our lives. Then we inevitably experience disappointment and frustration – because we find that we can never get enough. To find the joy that the Lord wants for us, we must live in the spirit of the evangelical hymn that goes like this:                          

                 Take my life and let it be / Consecrated, Lord, to thee.

          Take my moments and my days / Let them flow in ceaseless praise

Take my hands and let them move / at the impulse of the love.

Take my feet and let them be / Swift and beautiful for thee.

Take my voice and let me sing / Always, only for my King.

Take my lips and let them be / Filled with messages from thee. 

Take my silver and my gold / Not a mite would I withhold.

Take my intellect and use / Every power as thou shalt choose.

Take my will and make it Thine, / It shall be no longer mine.
Take my heart, it is Thine own, / It shall be Thy royal throne.

Take my love, my Lord, I pour / At Thy feet its treasure store.
Take myself and I will be Ever, only, all for Thee.

Monday, May 25, 2015

MY "PHILOSOPHY OF PREACHING."

I was surprised, but gratified, to find this 2009 article published today (May 24th) in the online version of the monthly journal First Things
 
Jay Hughes
 
The gospel was not good advice but good news.”
— William R. Inge, Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral, London, 1911—1934.
 
Dean Inge was right. The preacher’s primary task is not to tell people what to do. It is to proclaim good news. Inge’s younger colleague at St. Paul’s, Canon V.A. Demant, put it thus in his book Christian Polity:
 
“Tell people only what they must do, and you will numb them into despair; you will turn the gospel into a shabby replica of the world’s irreligious and nagging moralism, with its oceanfuls of good advice. But tell them what they are, of their dignity as made in the image of God, and that their sins are wicked perversions of their nature; . . . tell them that the world with all its horrors is still God’s world, though its true order is upside down; tell them that they can do all things through Christ, because in him all the powers of their nature are directed to fruition . . . and you will help to revive hope in this dispirited generation.”
 
It is a paradox, but one easily verified, that preaching morality will never motivate people to be good. It will discourage them. It will inevitably bore them. It may even drive them to despair, because of the suggestion, implied if not stated, that if they are not good God will not love and bless them. But the proclamation of the gospel, the good news of what God has done, is doing, and will continue to do for hearers and preacher alike, will motivate people to love God and neighbor as nothing else can.
To be effective, therefore, preaching must be in the indicative mood, not in the imperative. Today more than ever, those to whom the preacher addresses himself are there voluntarily. The Newark priest and former Anglican, Fr. Alvin Kimel, wrote recently in the Internet journal InsideCatholic:


“In my 28 years of pastoral ministry and experience, I have learned that Church-going, Mass-attending Christians do not need to be constantly informed that they “should” be good people; they do not need to be harangued to avoid sin and do good works. They already know all of that. They know the difference between right and wrong, good and evil.”
 
A Protestant preacher, W. Floyd Bresee, makes a similar point when writes:
“Nearly all the most successful preachers have accentuated the positive . . . . One best overwhelms evil not by focusing on the bad but on the good. “Whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things” (Phil. 4:8). . . . The Lord lays upon no man a message that will discourage and dishearten his congregation. Don’t send your people home on flat tires. Touch positive emotions by preaching hope.”
 
Those who come to Mass on Sunday need reassurance—more than exhortations to be good—that God continues to love them despite their failures. The preacher who presents the moral law as the standard we must meet before God will love and bless us betrays the gospel. God’s law is a description of our grateful response to the unmerited and unconditional love which the Lord showers upon us—not because we are good enough, but because he is so good that he wants to share his love with us, despite our unworthiness. There is a place for exhortation in the pulpit. But it belongs at the end, when the overwhelming message of God’s unmerited love and goodness has prepared the hearers’ hearts and minds to respond to his love through grateful obedience and worshipful self-sacrifice.
 
Mediocre preaching is not the result of poor technique, but of empty content. Courses in public speaking will never produce good preachers if the preacher has nothing to say. Remedying that defect (the root of almost all bad preaching) requires hard work. It includes, at a minimum, familiarity with the great theological ideas of Holy Scripture, mediated (in the Catholic view) through Church tradition: God’s self-disclosure in history, election, grace, atonement, sin, repentance, forgiveness. Those ideas are exciting. People have fought and died for them. How can the preacher who has never tasted that excitement communicate it to others?


Are today’s Catholic seminarians seriously wrestling with those great themes and trying to master them? I like to challenge seminarians by asking them to find out how hard their peers in medical and law school must work; and then to ask themselves whether their own studies are equally demanding. If not, then they, and the people of God whom they are preparing to serve, are being short-changed.


“Nothing is so fatal to the effect of a sermon,” wrote John Henry Newman in The Idea of a University, “as the habit of preaching on three or four subjects at once.” To avoid this danger, I formed the habit, when I first embarked on the ministry of the word over a half century ago, of writing out in one concise sentence the aim of each sermon or homily. I continue this practice today. If the preacher cannot say what he is aiming at, his hearers will never guess. The resulting discourse will inevitably lack that conciseness which Newman called “the life of preaching.”


Concentrating on the aim of this particular homily means ruthlessly eliminating everything, however important and true, which does not serve this aim. If useful, it can be saved for use on another occasion. “You can never guard yourself against the charge of heresy in a single sermon,” a veteran preacher told me when I was just starting out. What he meant was that one can never get the whole of our Christian and Catholic faith into a single homily. Trying to do so is a common fault of novice preachers.


"Preaching is communication of Jesus Christ himself,” Fr. Alvin Kimel writes. In an earlier age pulpits often displayed inside, for the preacher to see, the text from John 12:21: “Sir, we would like to see Jesus.” That is the deepest desire of the people of God, even if many are unable to articulate it. To fulfill that desire, preachers must themselves “know” the Lord, not just with the head, but with the heart. Acquiring that knowledge takes place outside the worshipers’ view: in the “secret place” recommended by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 6:6).
 
Even the casual reader of the gospels cannot fail to note the time that Jesus spent in solitary, private prayer. It was in those hours alone with his heavenly Father that Jesus developed the spiritual power which enabled him to say to rough working men, “Come, follow me”—and have them obey him on the spot. It was in prayer that Jesus became the preacher of whom Mark writes: “And they were astonished at his teaching, for he spoke to them with authority and not like the scribes” (Mark 1:22). If Jesus needed those times alone with God, we preachers are fools and guilty fools if we neglect prayer.


If preachers want to speak with an authority like his (and which of us does not?), we must spend time alone with God, waiting upon him in silence, day in and day out, week after week, month after month, year after year—even when, indeed especially when, God seems to answer only with silence.


Our goal should be preaching that causes our hearers to say, with Cleopas and his unnamed companion (perhaps his wife) on the first Easter evening: “Did we not feel our hearts on fire as he talked with us . . . and explained the scriptures to us?” (Luke 24:32). We can preach like that—but only on the condition that our hearts have first been touched by the divine fire. For that we must spend time alone with the Lord. There is no other way but the way described by a young African-American Baptist pastor:


“There is no substitute for preaching. I don’t care what else a preacher does in the community or what cause he promotes, the people want to know on Sunday morning whether there is a word from the Lord.”
 
John Jay Hughes is a priest of the St. Louis archdiocese and the author, most recently, of No Ordinary Fool: A Testimony to Grace and Columns of Light: 30 Remarkable­ Saints
 

"THE HUNDREDFOLD REWARD -- WITH PERSECUTION."


Homily for May 26th, 2015: Sirach 35:1-12; Mark 10:28-31.

          “Appear not before the Lord empty-handed . . . With each contribution show a cheerful countenance, and pay your tithes in a spirit of joy. Give to the Most High as he has given to you, generously, according to your means.” These words from the Old Testament book Sirach, in our first reading, contain a whole theology of giving. Jesus surely had them in mind when he answered Peter’s implied question in today’s gospel reading. I say “implied,” since Peter did not actually formulate a question. Instead he simply made a statement: “We have given up everything and followed you.” Peter’s words immediately follow Jesus’ command to the rich young man in yesterday’s gospel reading: “Go sell what you have, and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven.” 

          In reminding Jesus about what he and the other disciples had sacrificed in order to follow Jesus, Peter was implying the question: ‘What reward will we have?’ Jesus responds by saying, in effect: ‘You will receive, already in this world, a hundred times as much as whatever you have given up for me; and in the world to come eternal life.’ Jesus qualifies this promise with the words, “with persecution.” The persecution which those two words foretold would start soon after Jesus’ resurrection and ascension to heaven. It would continue, with varying intensity, for three centuries more.

          Today it has returned: in the Middle East and parts of Africa, where the age of martyrdom has returned with an intensity, cruelty, and brutality not seen since antiquity. The persecution we are witnessing in this and other western countries has not reached that intensity – yet. But it is there nonetheless. The late Cardinal George of Chicago was referring to this persecution in his oft-quoted statement to a priests’ gathering a few years ago: “I expect to die in my bed. My successor will die in prison. His successor will die a martyr in the public square.” Too often omitted, when those words are quoted, is the cardinal’s concluding prophecy: “His successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization as the Church has done so often in human history."

          We pray therefore in this Mass, as Jesus has taught us: “Deliver us from evil.”

Sunday, May 24, 2015

"ALL THINGS ARE POSSIBLE FOR GOD."


Homily for May 25th, 2015: Mark 10:17-27.
It is tempting to dismiss this story about the rich young man on the ground that we=re not rich. Even if that is true, this young man resembles us in another way. He takes his religion seriously. How devastated he must have been to hear Jesus tell him he is still Alacking in one thing.@ When he heard what that was, he was shocked. >Sell everything?= we can imagine him asking. >You=ve got to be kidding!= No wonder that that Ahe went away sad.” Wouldn=t you? After all, enough is enough.
Jesus disciples were equally shocked. Their religion taught them that wealth was a sign of God=s favor. AThen who can be saved?@ they ask. Jesus’ answer could be paraphrased as follows. >If you think you can get to heaven by your own efforts, forget it. You cannot. That is impossible. You won’t get there without your best effort. But at the end of the day getting into heaven is a miracle, a miracle of grace. Heaven is not a reward for services rendered. It is God=s free gift.=
Jesus summons us, as he summoned the rich young man in today=s gospel, to trust not in our own efforts, but in God, for whom all things are possible. So -- When life seems too much for you; when you are weighed down by anxiety, illness, injustice, the claims of others, or the nagging sense of your own inadequacy; when God=s demands on you seem too great B whenever, in short, you come up against the impossible; then you are up against God. He is the God of the impossible. In every impossible situation, in every trial that is too hard for you to bear, his divine Son and your best friend is saying to you, with tender love: 

AFor you it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.@