Friday, June 5, 2015

A WIDOW'S MITE


Homily for June 6th 2015: Mark 12: 38-44.

In a society without today’s social safety net, a widow was destitute. For the widow in today’s gospel to give all that she had to live on for that day was, most people would say, irresponsible, even scandalous. God looks, however, not at the outward action, but at the heart. For God what counts, therefore, is not the size of the gift, but its motive. The wealthy contributors were motivated at least in part by the desire for human recognition and praise. The widow could expect no recognition. Her gift was too insignificant to be noticed. For God, however, no gift is too small provided it is made in the spirit of total self-giving that comes from faith and is nourished by faith.

Jesus recognizes this generosity in the widow. Even the detail that her gift consists of two coins is significant. She could easily have kept one for herself. Prudence would say that she should have done so. She refuses to act out of prudence. She wants to give totally, trusting in God alone. That is why Jesus says that she has given Amore than all the others.@ They calculated how much they could afford to give. In the widow=s case calculation could lead to only one conclusion: she could not afford to give anything at all. Her poverty excused her from giving. She refuses to calculate. She prefers instead to trust in Him for whom, as the angel Gabriel told Mary, Anothing is impossible@ (Luke 1:38)

This poor widow shows us better than long descriptions what it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. True discipleship will always seem foolish, even mad, to those who live by worldly wisdom. This poor widow had a wisdom higher than the wisdom of this world: the wisdom of faith. With her small gift she takes her place alongside the other great biblical heroes of faith, from Abraham to Mary, who set their minds first on God=s kingdom, confident that their needs would be provided by Him who (as Jesus reminds us) Aknows that you have need of these things@ (Luke 12:30). This widow is also one of that Ahuge crowd which no one can count@ (Rev. 7:9) whom we celebrate on All Saints= Day B those whose faith inspired them to sacrifice all for Jesus Christ, and who in so doing received from him the Ahundredfold reward@ that he promised (Mark 10:30).

Now, in this hour, Jesus is inviting each one of us to join that happy company: to sacrifice all, that we may receive all. He challenges us to begin today!

Thursday, June 4, 2015

PATIENCE

Homily for June 5th, 2015: Patience.

The Talmud, the collection of rabbinical wisdom and commentary, has a story about Abraham. With the hospitality for which the patriarch was famous, he invited a stranger into his tent and feasted him lavishly. When he invited his visitor to join him in prayer to the one true God, the stranger refused, explaining that he was a fire worshiper. Angry that his visitor was worshipping a false god, Abraham drove the man from his door. That night the Lord appeared to Abraham in a dream and said: AI have borne with that ignorant man for seventy years. Could you not have patiently suffered him for one night?@

Which one of us has never felt impatience? The English spiritual writer Evelyn Underhill writes: AOn every level of life from housework to the heights of prayer, in all judgment and all efforts to get things done, hurry and impatience are sure marks of the amateur.@ 

Professional mountaineers who guide climbers to high peaks -- the Swiss Alps, the Himalayas north of India -- can always spot the novice climbers. They climb too fast, soon tire, and fail to reach the summit. The experienced mountaineer is patient. He climbs slowly. It is only patient climbers who reach the highest peaks. 

Life is like that. Most of the road to heaven must be taken at thirty miles an hour. Here is another quote from Evelyn Underhill:  APatience with ourselves is a duty for Christians, and the only real humility. For it means patience with a growing creature whom God has taken in hand and whose completion he will effect in his own time and way.@

The 19th century English convert, Fr. Frederick W. Faber, a contemporary of Bl. John Henry Newman writes: AWe must wait for God, long, meekly, in the wind and wet, in the thunder and lightning, in the cold and the dark. Wait, and he will come. He never comes to those who do not wait.@

I invite you to pray in this Mass for patience: patience with ourselves, patience with others, patience with circumstances. The best help to patience is to reflect on how unbelievably patient God has been with ourselves C and continues to be right now. 

Wednesday, June 3, 2015

THE EUCHARIST AS MEAL, SACRIFICE, AND COVENANT

Corpus Christi, Year B. Heb. 9:11-15; Mark 14:12-16. 22-26.
AIM  To enhance the hearers’ ability to worship by explaining the meaning of the Eucharist.
 
          Most Catholics over fifty can still remember “the old Mass.” The priest had his back to the people most of the time. This didn’t make much difference, since the Mass was largely silent. The little we could hear was in Latin, so we couldn’t understand it.  Here is how the Mass of those days is described by the American Jesuit, Cardinal Avery Dulles, who died in December 2008 at the age of 90. Raised a Presbyterian, he became a Catholic as an undergraduate at Harvard. 
          “There was little external unity to be discerned,” Dulles wrote about his early experiences of the silent Latin Mass. “The priest ... carried out his tasks almost as though he were alone. The congregation, for their part, were not watching with scrupulous exactitude the movements of the celebrant. Some, on the contrary, were reciting prayers on mysterious strings of beads, which Catholics call rosaries. Others were thumbing through pages of prayer-books and Missals, which, for all I knew, might have been totally unrelated to the Mass. Not even a hymn was sung to bring unity into this apparently dull and disconnected service.” (Avery Dulles, A Testimonial to Grace [Sheed & Ward, 1996] p. 63)  
          Unaccustomed to Catholic ways, the young Avery Dulles failed to perceive that in what he called “this apparently dull and disconnected service” there was one point of unity. In the middle of the long silence the ringing of a bell or gong heralded a dramatic climax. Suddenly the church was hushed. Everyone’s eyes were riveted on the priest’s back, as he raised above his head the host which he had just consecrated.  A moment later the bell rang again as he elevated the chalice with the Precious Blood. Children in Catholic schools were taught the words which the priest whispered in Latin just before the elevation of host and chalice: “This is my body ... This is my blood.”
          Jesus spoke those words, of course, at the Last Supper. Actually, Jesus said more than that. He embedded each of those statements in a command: “Take this, all of you, and eat it. ... Take this, all of you, and drink from it.” Those words show that the Eucharist is a meal. The important thing about the consecration of the bread and wine is not merely that Jesus comes to be present on the altar; but that he is present as food. Just as bread exists not merely for its own sake, but to be eaten, and as wine exists to be drunk, so Jesus offers us his body and blood in the Eucharist as our spiritual food and drink.
          The Eucharist, however, is unlike all other meals: it is a sacrificial meal. At every Mass the priest, acting in the name of Jesus who is the true celebrant of every Eucharist, repeats not only Jesus’ words over the cup, “This is my blood,” but also the words he immediately added: “It will be poured out for you and for many, for the forgiveness of sins.” For Jesus, as for all those steeped in the Jewish scriptures he loved, the pouring out of blood symbolized the offering of a life. Jesus laid down his life for us on Calvary, offering to his Father a perfect, unblemished sacrifice for the sins of all humanity in all ages, our own sins included.
          Our second reading says that Jesus offered his life on Calvary “once for all.”  That is important. There is no repetition of Jesus’ sacrifice in the Mass. Rather it is sacramentally commemorated. This means that in the unseen, spiritual realm Calvary becomes, for us, a living, present reality.  We express this in the third eucharistic acclamation, based on some words of St. Paul: “When we eat this bread and drink this cup, we proclaim your death, Lord Jesus, until you come in glory.” (Cf. 1 Cor. 11:26)
The Mass, therefore, is a meal, but it is also a sacrifice.
          Finally, this sacrificial meal is also a covenant. At every Mass we repeat words from today’s gospel: “This is the cup of my blood, the blood of the new and everlasting covenant.” A covenant is a solemn pact which unites those who make it.  The marriage vows are a covenant, uniting husband and wife “in one flesh,” as the Bible says.
          When, in obedience to Jesus’ command at the Last Supper, we “do this’ with the bread and wine — sharing the one bread and drinking from the one cup — we are united in fellowship with the Father, in the love of his Son, who is present in the Eucharist in and through to power of his Holy Spirit. United in this way with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we are also joined in fellowship with all other sharers in this sacrificial meal and covenant.
          Another way of stating this is to say that it is the Eucharist which makes us Church; for the Church is the fellowship of those who are united with God, and with one another. The Mass is not a form of private prayer — “the soul alone with God.” It is the common banquet of all God’s people. The Greeting of Peace which we exchange before coming to the Lord’s table is not an intrusion on our personal prayer. It is the acting out of one of the Eucharist’s essential aspects.
          In the Eucharist Jesus nourishes us with his body and blood. At every Mass we are present spiritually, but truly, in the Upper Room, and at Calvary — with but one exception: we cannot see Jesus with our physical eyes, only with the eyes of faith. Whenever the Holy Sacrifice is celebrated, all the benefits of Jesus’ one, unrepeatable sacrifice become available to us. In this sacrificial meal we become sharers in Christ’s “eternal covenant” which unites us sinners with the all-holy God, and with one another. So much drama, so much wonder, so much spiritual treasure! Are we really aware of it when we come to Mass? Do we truly worship?
          That is the homily I have prepared for you on this beautiful feast.  I would like to conclude with a personal testimony. Though I remember well the old Mass which I described at the outset, it is not the Mass I grew up with. For the first thirty-two years of my life I was an Anglican — or as we say in this country, an Episcopalian.  For six of those years I had the great privilege of serving, like my father and grandfather before me, as an Anglican priest.
          The Mass I celebrated in those years, and which nourished me from childhood, was in English. It had full congregational participation, including hearty and often fervent singing of hymns which puts Catholics to shame. It was deeply reverent. I often attended Mass in Catholic Churches. Like the young Avery Dulles, I found it, with rare exceptions, hurried and slapdash; the Latin (when it was audible, which was seldom) so gabbled and garbled that it could have been Chinese. There was little reverence and precious little beauty.
          Leaving the Anglican Church of my heritage and entering the Catholic Church fifty-five years ago was the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. Today, looking back, I can also say that it was the best thing I have ever done. It was some years, however, before I could say that. For me the best and most wonderful thing about being a Catholic, and a priest, is being able to lead you, the holy people God, as we obey Jesus’ command at the Last Supper to “do this in my memory.” 
          Three decades ago the editor of the international Catholic weekly, The Tablet, published in England, wrote words that I have treasured ever since I first read them: “Those who have had the fortune to travel widely and meet priests in many countries will agree that, though they may have met embittered and frustrated men here and there, for the most part their encounter has been with dedicated men: unselfish to a degree, simple and honest and above all happy in their vocation. Such travelers must ask themselves if they can say the same of all their married friends.”
          Priests would give different reasons for this happiness. For me the supreme reason is the privilege, so far beyond any man’s deserving, of offering daily the sacramental memorial of the one, full, perfect, and all-sufficient sacrifice of Calvary and being nourished by — and distributing to you, the Lord’s holy people — that daily bread for which Jesus taught us to pray.

WHICH COMMANDMENT COMES FIRST?


Homily for June 4th, 2015: Mark 12: 28-34.

          Which commandment comes first? Jesus is asked in today’s gospel. It was a standard question amongst rabbis in Jesus’ day. Jesus answers by citing two well known Old Testament texts, from Deuteronomy 6 and Leviticus 19, about loving God and others.

          The question is still being asked today, when people want to know is it more important to worship God, or to serve the poor? The shortest answer is: both are important.

          If people want to know which is primary, then the answer is, worship. But if our worship has no consequences in daily life, however, it is hypocrisy which cries to heaven for vengeance. On the other hand, service of others which is not performed for love of God, but for the uplifting feeling of serving a noble cause, or some other human ideology, is not genuine service. Those “served” in this way experience not the warmth of compassion, but the cold impersonalism of bureaucracy, which undermines so many of the best intentioned efforts of the welfare state to help the poor and disadvantaged. 

          We followers of Jesus Christ are called to live at the intersection of the vertical and the horizontal. That is where Jesus lived. It is also where he died. The cross, which is itself the literal intersection of the vertical and the horizontal, tore Jesus apart and killed him. For us too the attempt to live where the vertical and horizontal intersect will mean pain, rending asunder, and ultimately death. But this is precisely that dying-in-order-to-live of which Jesus himself speaks often in the gospels. For behind the cross Christians have always seen, and we must always see, the open portals of the empty tomb – the sign and proof that death is not the end. Death was not the end for Jesus. It will not be the end for us; it will be rather the gateway to new life, unbelievably more wonderful than this one. It is Jesus’ resurrection which enables us to live as people of hope – and above all as people of joy. 

 

Tuesday, June 2, 2015

LIFE AFTER DEATH


Homily for June 3rd, 2015.

Jesus= critics present him with a hypothetical case about a woman who has been married to seven husbands. Jesus might have told his questioners that the case was too frivolous to merit comment. Instead Jesus shows himself, here as elsewhere, to be a model teacher by using his opponents= attempt to show him up as the occasion for serious teaching about the future life.

Which of the woman=s seven husbands will have her as his wife after death, Jesus= critics ask. Jesus= answer falls into two parts. First, he says that life beyond death is not a prolongation of life on earth. It is something completely new. That is the meaning of Jesus= statement that Athose who are deemed worthy to attain to the coming age and to the resurrection of the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage.@ A fundamental purpose of marriage is the continuation of the human race through the procreation of children. Beyond death there is no need for more children to be born. 

The second part of Jesus= answer addresses his critics= contention that the idea of a future life is absurd. On the contrary, Jesus tells them, our own Scriptures clearly imply the resurrection when they represent Moses addressing the Lord as Athe God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob; and he is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.@ Those final words are crucial: all are alive to God, even those who have died. Before him, Jesus is saying, those long dead patriarchs remain alive. 

Jesus= way of interpreting Scripture may not be ours. But his teaching is not hard to grasp. His fundamental point is that our hope of life beyond death is not based on wishful thinking, but on the nature of God himself. He is not just a philosophical Afirst cause,@ an Aunmoved mover,@ or the Agreat architect of the universe.@ God is all those things, yet he is infinitely more.    

The God whom Jesus reveals is our loving heavenly Father, who enters into a personal relationship with us B a relationship of love. This love relationship cannot be terminated by death, any more than God=s relationship of love with his Son was ended by Jesus= death. I learned this very early, through my mother=s death when I was only six years old. A few days after my mother=s funeral, my father told me: AOur love for Mummy continues, and her love for us. We must continue to pray for her. She is with God. He is looking after her. Our prayers can help her.@ That made sense to me when I was only six. It still makes sense to me over eight decades later. I pray for my dear mother by name in every Mass I celebrate. I encourage you to pray for your own departed loved ones at the prayer for the dead in the prayer of consecration.

Monday, June 1, 2015

"REPAY TO GOD WHAT IS GOD'S."


Homily for June 2nd, 2015: Mark12:13-17.

          Many of those who put questions to Jesus did so not to get information, but to “catch him in speech.” They hoped to get a reply that they could use against him. This is the case in today’s gospel. The taxes imposed by the hated Roman government of occupation were deeply resented by Jesus’ people. If Jesus told people not to pay, he could be denounced to the authorities. If he said we should pay, he would be discredited with the people. 

          Jesus does not give either of the answers his questioners were looking for.  He seldom did. Instead he demands that they show him the coin used to pay the tax. It is a Roman coin. By producing it from their own pockets Jesus’ questioners show that, whatever their theoretical position, in fact they recognize the existing situation. The country is ruled by foreigners. It is their money which is legal tender, and no other.

          Jesus’ words, “Repay to Caesar what is Caesar’s” reject the radical position of those who claimed that the Roman government was unlawful and should not be obeyed at all. All the emphasis, however, is on the second part of Jesus’ answer: “Repay to God what is God’s.”  Do that, Jesus is saying, and everything else will fall into place. Note that Jesus speaks not or paying but of repaying: “repay to God what is God’s.” What is God’s anyway? The answer is inescapable: everything! From God we receive all that we are and have, sin excepted. God even gives us our possessions and our money. How long would you retain your possessions and earning power if you lost your health or even one significant human faculty? At bottom even the things have worked for are gifts from the creator and giver of all: God.                        

          If repaying to God what is God’s means anything, it must mean putting God first in our lives. People who do that make a beautiful discovery. They find that God will never permit himself to be outdone in generosity. They find that what is left over for themselves, after giving God the first portion of their time, talent, and treasure, is always enough, and more than enough. They discover that Jesus’ words are really true: “There is more happiness in giving than in receiving” (Act 20:35).

Sunday, May 31, 2015

"GOD WILL TURN HIS VINEYARD OVER TO OTHERS."


Homily for June 1st, 2015: Mark 12:1-12.

          The story in today’s gospel would have reminded Jesus’ hearers of a similar story in the prophet Isaiah, about God had planted a vineyard, namely his people whom he had delivered from slavery in Egypt, in a new land. God had lavished care on his vineyard, his people, only to find that they failed to produce the fruit he looked for. Isaiah warned that there would be a day of reckoning. The parable in the gospel reading we have just heard gives a similar warning to the leaders of Jesus’ people, who are about to reject him. The vineyard God had given them would be taken away from them, Jesus warned them, and turned over to others.

          That warning is not obsolete. We can read it as addressed to us American Catholics. The position of influence we enjoy in the Church, because of our numbers and financial resources, will be taken away from us and given to Catholics in Third World countries, if our Catholicism is complacent, conventional, and lukewarm — while theirs is dynamic, daring, enthusiastic. 

          In 1974, forty-one years ago now, a Swiss priest, Fr. Walbert Bühlmann, wrote a book entitled The Coming of the Third Church. Bühlmann’s “Third Church” was the church of the southern hemisphere: Latin America, Africa, parts of Asia. By the end of the twentieth century, Bühlmann said, most of the world’s Catholics would live below the equator. The older churches of Europe and North America would no longer rank first. Folks, it has already happened. The majority of the world’s Catholics now live in the southern hemisphere. For the first time ever our Pope comes from south of the equator.

          As a 18th century English hymn has it: “God moves in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform.”